Night Songs

ONE

Colin stood in the front of the boarded window, a lighted cigarette in his right hand, his left jammed into his hip pocket. Crushed butts littered the floor at his feet, and his hair was a slick tangle over his brow from constant tugging and violent shakes each time the enormity of what he was saying thrust itself home.

"We saw the signs of what was happening a hundred times." He stopped, changed his mind, "f saw them, but didn't know what I was looking for, so didn't know what I was seeing. But they were all there-Lilla's reluctance to have Gran buried in the usual way, her insistence that he was furious at us for imaginary evils… I kept assuming her grief had mixed up her time sense. What else was I going to think?

"But at my place yesterday, just before Peg came over, Lilla was telling me straight out he'd not died at all, or he'd come back somehow, and he was out to get what he believed was his due. He was using some… some power of his to get what he thought we had cheated him out of.

"He was dead, and now he's back.

"Needless to say, I didn't believe a word. Power like that belongs in dreams and movies."

"It doesn't exist," Montgomery said simply. Seated at El's desk, he looked at Garve first, then at Peg and

Matt who were in a chair at the back of the room, Matt still asleep and sprawled in her lap.

"It does exist," Colin insisted without heat. "I don't know what's behind it, how it does what it does, but it damn well exists and Tess Mayfair's walking is the proof. What Garve and I saw there in the cell block was just icing on the cake.

"And now that I think about it, I'm sure that what I saw at the shack was Gran's shroud. After the funeral, after she was sure we were all in bed, Lilla went into the water and brought him out. She had to have done it, she must have-there was no one else to help her."

An hour had passed since he'd begun, speaking quickly, not giving himself a chance to think, and therefore backtracking several times. But the more he argued, the more he believed-and the horror of it was, he could see them believing as well.

And then he had offered what, for him, was the best argument outside any physical evidence: If he had been able to convince himself that the entire world had misunderstood him, had stacked deck and arrayed enemy against him to the extent that the only way he could win would be by ending it, why couldn't someone like Gran hate just as much? And it had been hate. Hatred for those fools who should have known, and didn't; hatred for those so-called friends who should have cared, and didn't. Colin had hated without understanding that his self-pity was blinding and the people he railed against were the very people trying to help him. His hatred had created a world beyond the real, and the only person who inhabited it was him.

Gran had hated the same way.

The difference had been in the final step.

Colin had slashed his wrists, and the pain had shocked him into the recognition of folly, into the realization that his so-called beliefs were false and falsely based. Gran, however, found himself dying and took a claw-hold on all those ancient beliefs and rituals he had brought from a home that had exiled him summarily. He took hold and refused to release them, and in that refusal made them as tangible as the shack in which he was ending his life-his rage had shredded the fragile curtain between the supernatural and the present.

"The point is," Colin said-he paused and looked at Hugh-"the point is, we're not in our world anymore. We're in Gran's now. And for the moment he's calling all the shots." His expression was grim. "All bets are off now. The rules we used to know aren't the rules anymore."

"What about Lilla?" Garve asked, though he needed no convincing.

"I don't know. I wish I did, but I just don't know."

"She isn't Lilla anymore," Peg said quietly, and they turned as one to stare. "She's not. Not the Lilla we used to know, that is. Maybe not Lilla at all. She was when she tried to warn us, she was when she tried to talk with Matt at the marina. But not anymore. Something happened, and if that business in the cell is any indication, she's… not. Right now, I don't know any other way to put it.

"Matt was right all along, too," Peg continued. "It was the songs. The ones we heard every night. She must have been using something-spells, maybe, or whatever you call them-that Gran taught her, to… I don't know, to bring him back, do something more? But I do know I'm right. She's either been driven crazy by Gran's influence and is doing these things without knowing what she's doing, or she's totally possessed.

"But whatever it is, Lilla is lost to us. We can't go to her for explanations. She just can't help us anymore."

"She's right," Colin said, crushing one cigarette beneath his sole while lighting another. "And we don't know enough. If we're going to get out of this, we have to know more. Jesus, we've got to know these new rules."

"And we have to tell the others," Garve reminded him, and looked angrily at the dead telephone. Hugh only shook his head sadly.

Colin strode to the desk and leaned over it, glaring. "What is wrong with you now, for God's sake?"

Hugh met his gaze with a glare of his own. "You're talking about Lilla being crazy, but have you been listening to yourself lately? Jesus Christ, Colin, I mean… really! Have you heard what you've been saying?"

He forced himself not to reach over and grab the doctor by the throat. "Look, Hugh, not one hour ago you were telling Peg about what happened with us and Tess. By God, you sure as hell believed then. What the hell happened?"

"Your so-called explanation," Montgomery said simply. "It's fantastic."

"Literally," Colin said. "You got a better one?"

"Give me time."

"Well, how much time do you think we have?"

The plywood shuddered, the venetian blinds on the outside clattering like musket fire.

Colin pointed toward the door. "The storm is starting to push in the tide. If we don't do something soon, we're going to be wading hip-deep in the damn ocean."

Hugh rubbed his eyes, pushed a hand across his lips. "You accept it all so easily."

"No," Colin assured him, "it isn't easy at all. But I don't have to meet more than one Tess Mayfair, or hear Lilla with Gran's voice, or see another demonstration like we did in the cell before I decide that evil isn't just another word in the dictionary. I'm a grown man, Hugh, but I'm scared shitless because there's a damn nightmare out there, and it ain't going away just because I say it isn't real."

The ceiling lights dimmed, grew bright again, and Garve stood and reached for his hat.

"Where are you going?" Hugh asked fearfully.

"If the phones don't work, I have to find out who's left in this place on my own, right? In the car."

"Crazy," the doctor whispered. He took hold of the ends of his handlebar mustache and begin to twist them, muttering to himself, sighing, jumping when something slammed into the plywood.

Garve left without a word, and Peg watched as he slid into the patrol car. He fussed with the sun visor, reached into the glove compartment, and stopped moving. She held her breath and waited, staring, until he left the car and returned to the office. He said nothing. He only threw a crumpled, soiled file card onto the desk. Colin frowned and smoothed it open.

"My God!"

Peg looked a question.

"This is a fingerprint card, from Flocks." He looked to Garve. "Is this what El went for?"

Garve nodded.

"Well, what?" Hugh demanded. He snatched the card away instead of waiting for an answer, and examined it. "Jesus. It's Gran's fingerprints," he said to Peg. "It was Gran's fingerprints on Warren's wallet."

"That son of a bitchin' old man," Garve said intensely. "That goddamned old man." He set himself in front of Peg, and she could barely meet his gaze. Colin wanted to intervene, but he waited instead. "You were closer to that family than any of us," the chief said tonelessly. "Can you help? Did Lilla ever tell you anything about Gran?"

She shrugged weakly. "I don't know. Not much. He… he wasn't from Haiti or any place like that. He was from one of the smaller islands, the Caicos, I think they were. Lilla told me once they're somewhere north of Haiti." She pursed her lips. "Haiti. Lord, you don't suppose this has anything to do with voodoo or something like that? It couldn't, right? I mean, it just couldn't." No one responded. Her voice lowered. "He had to leave there in a hurry, as I understand. A big hurry."

"Yes," Colin said, looking toward the cells. "When Lilla came to the cottage, she said something about him having to leave where he was. She said he did things wrong, and claimed they weren't wrong at all."

"Maybe he was a dissident," she said, looking at Hugh to be sure he was listening. "Or a blasphemer, something terrible like that. Voodoo's a religion, you should know that, and every religion has a few grumblers who think it's being done all wrong. Gran might have been one of them, and when he came here and didn't get rich right away… well, it's just like you said, Col. He got angry for all the wrong reasons."

"Great," Garve said. "Then he's still alive."

"No," Colin contradicted. "At least I don't think so. But he's still around, and he's using Lilla to help him."

"But how?" The chief grabbed at his hat and holster. His frustration was running high. "Jesus Christ, how?"

"Hattie Mills," Peg said then.

Garve turned and frowned. "What?"

"Hattie Mills, Garve. Hattie, for heaven's sake. We need to know more, and maybe she can help us. Good Lord, we've all gotten enough lectures from her about this god and that beast and what all the hell else. If anybody knows something about what's going on, she certainly has to."

"I saw Tess shot," Doc said helplessly, more to himself than Colin. "Shot twice, run over, she fell over a cliff." Still leaning against the desk, he took off his glasses and lay them on the blotter. One finger pushed them around until he could poke at the front of the lenses. "She's dead."

"She is," Colin said gently.

"Then we can't kill her again, can we?" He looked up and blinked. "My God, Colin, do you hear what I'm saying? That Gran has hold of the dead, and he's making them-"

"I hear you. And I can hear me, too. Don't you think I'm wondering if I've lost my mind? But I know what hate can do to a man. I know."

Though no one said a word, there was no silence. The wind had taken their voices and set them screaming.

Garve strapped on his gunbelt and pulled a box of cartridges from a drawer. He shoved it awkwardly into his pants pocket, and unsnapped the holster's flap. A hitch at his belt and he started for the door. "I better get moving."

"The Run," Peg said then.

He paused, staring.

"If you do find anyone, have them go to the Clipper Run."

"Right," Colin agreed. "It's bigger than this place, and it has fewer windows. If it comes to that we can… we can hold out until the storm's over." He grabbed for his jacket and pulled it on. "I'll get Peg and Matt over there now, then Doc and I will see what Hattie can do for us."

Without asking permission, he went to the gun cabinet and pulled down a rifle, turned and looked at Hugh. The doctor pushed himself wearily to his feet and retrieved his glasses. He blew on the lenses, examined them, put them on. Then he stroked his mustache and looked around slowly. When he saw Colin waiting, he nodded, and Colin tossed him the weapon and a cartridge box. Then he turned around and took a shotgun for himself.

"It didn't work on Tess," Hugh whispered.

"Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to spit in her eye," Colin said, and put his arm around Peg's shoulder. Garve left a moment later, and Matthew roused himself from his protection. He glanced around sleepily, saw the guns, and cringed. Colin winked and explained where they were going, took his hand firmly and led him to the door. Peg followed Hugh, and closed the door behind them.

The street was still fairly dry, but a needled spray in the driven air clung to them as soon as they gathered on the sidewalk. The wind bent them over, made talking impossible, and the glow over the island had shifted from uncertain daylight to a faint and soiled gold-gray. They had just reached the corner when the amber traffic signal over the intersection snapped loose from its guy wires and crashed to the blacktop in a scattering of glass and metal and a palsied whirl of colorless sparks. The wires lashed overhead, slapping against the road until they tangled against telephone poles, one curving until it fell into the Inn's parking lot to remain there, jumping.

Though the temperature hadn't dropped more than a few degrees, Colin clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. He hoped Peg and the boy were getting some measure of strength from the pressure of his arm, the squeeze of his hand, but he was unable to find much of it for himself. Had this been a perfectly normal day, with a perfectly normal autumn sky, televisions and radios playing, kids shouting in backyards and the boats out at their trawling, he would have ordered Hugh to lock him up until he could be transported to a state hospital on the mainland for prolonged and extensive observation. But the wind that caused his ears to ache, the here-and-gone slap of his shoes on the pavement, and the continuing afterimage of the fog-serpent coiling around Lilla's legs and waist, made him as afraid as he had been on the day he had thought he was going to die.

And as far as he knew now, it had always been that way.

He squinted and urged them on, noting as he ran that all the streets were deserted, no cars were at the curbs, and unless he was mistaken there wasn't a single lamp burning in the entire village. He didn't want to think about how many had left safely, and how many remained behind to fall under Gran's vengeance.

The children in his classes-he bit his cheek hard to prevent himself from seeing them all like Tess Mayfair.

He glanced over his shoulder; the patrol car was heading for the marina, and ripples of muddy water coursed across the Inn's parking lot to lap at the raised curbing. They rounded the hedge and pounded up the walk to the Clipper Run's entrance. The banner under the eaves had torn free at one corner and it lashed at them as they slammed through and shut the door behind them. Hugh fumbled for a moment, thinking he could lock it, then gave up with a frustrated curse and followed the others out of the foyer.

The dining room was dark, silent, and the wind thankfully muffled to a vague memory of moaning. The office door was open, a light beyond, and they moved toward it cautiously, keeping close to the bar while they strained to hear beyond the rasp of their own breathing. Colin noticed immediately there were no signs of the party that was scheduled to begin in less than two hours-no bunting, no special cloths on the tables, no one dusting or cleaning or behind the bar preparing glasses. A gust punched at the roof, and a streamer of dust twisted down from the ceiling.

Peg pushed a reluctant Matt behind her when they reached the far end of the curved bar, and reached out to brush a finger across Colin's back as he neared the office threshold.

Then they were in the light, and Cameron was startled out of his seat as they scattered immediately and soundlessly to the nearest chairs. The indignant protest already halfway out of his mouth died when he saw the looks on their faces, the weapons in their hands, the fact that none of them had a spot of color on their cheeks despite the harsh wind. When Colin reached for the telephone, however, he said, "It doesn't work, and what's going on here? You guys hunting wild gulls or something?"

"El Nichols is missing," Colin said, ignoring the sarcasm and sitting heavily on the edge of the desk. "Your friend Vincent is dead and his body's gone, and Tess Mayfair is dead and she's walking around."

Cameron started to laugh, but when he heard how shrill he sounded he coughed himself silent and retook his seat. "You're going to have to do better than that, Ross. I'm not one of your kids, y'know. I don't believe in fairies. And what are you talking about, Vincent's dead? Lombard just went out to find him, for God's sake."

"If you don't like that, then try this-Gran D'Grou is doing his best to wipe out the island."

"As I recall," Cameron said, "the old fart's long dead and buried."

"Yeah. I know."

Before the man could answer, Colin walked over to Peg and kissed her on the cheek. "You going to be all right?"

"Yes," she said. Then smiled. "No, I don't think so."

"Good. I'll assume that means you won't try anything stupid while Hugh and I are gone."

"Not as stupid as you, going out there again."

"Would somebody mind explaining all this?" Cameron demanded.

"Mr. Ross?"

He knelt beside Matt, put a hand on his arm.

The boy's eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was cold. "Can I go with you? I know the library real well. I go there all the time."

"I'm sorry, pal, but you can't."

"Hey, Ross," Cameron said loudly, "would you mind?" He glared then as Montgomery walked over to his private bar, poured himself a glass of his best bourbon, drank it without taking a breath, and smacked his lips loudly. "Hey, damn it!"

Hugh pushed his glasses up, poured himself another and offered it to Cameron. Cameron glowered. "You better have a good reason for all this spy stuff and bullshit, pal. You hear me, Ross? You better have a good reason for this."

Colin ignored him. "Matt, you and your mother stay here with Mr. Cameron. You find out some way to lock that front door, check the back, the kitchen windows, things like that. You musn't let anyone in here, you understand? No one but me or Doc or someone you're sure is… is all right."

Matt closed his eyes slowly, opened them again and attempted a smile. "Somebody who isn't dead, you mean." When Colin leaned back in surprise, the boy shrugged. "I wasn't always sleeping." Colin wanted to hug him, swallowed and did. The wind vanished for that moment, until he released the boy and stood again.

A jerk of his thumb over his shoulder toward Cameron. "Tell him, Peg," he said. "And for his sake, he'd better believe you by the time we get back."

He and Montgomery started for the door. With the knob in his hand he looked at Cameron, whose bewilderment had him gaping like a fish. "You have a gun, Bob?"

"A what?"

"Gun, stupid," Montgomery said. "The man asked if you have a gun."

"I…just a little…" He reached into his desk and pulled out a revolver. Montgomery considered, then tossed him the rifle. Cameron grabbed it and clutched it against his chest, staring at the barrel reaching up past his cheek. When Colin questioned him with a look, he said, "A bullet hole obviously doesn't do it, Col. That shotgun, though, might knock someone off his feet."

Colin nodded and led the way into the dining room. He stopped and poked his head back into the office long enough to tell Cameron to turn on all the lights; he didn't have to say it was to kill all the shadows.

Then Montgomery took Colin's arm and pushed him to the door. With his hand on the pushbar, Hugh blew a sigh and said, "I'm sorry."

"For what? For not believing the dead can walk? If you're sorry for that, you're as crazy as I am."

Montgomery's short laugh was more a forced wheezing; he ushered Colin through the door, followed and slammed it shut behind them.

The wind pummeled them sideways as they made their way to the sidewalk, slanted left and headed for the library. Colin was unnerved again by the emptiness of the town, the houses that should have at least had their porch lights on in this odd-colored dusk. At the end of the street the school reflected little but the winking on of the streetlights, and the flag on the pole was already shredding at the tip as it pointed the wind toward the bay and the mainland.

Hugh had hold of Colin's elbow as they turned into the library's walk. "I just want you to know I'm keeping an open mind," the doctor shouted.

"Good for you," Colin shouted back, and grinned as they ran up the wooden steps and paused on the porch, away from the main thrust of the storm. He shifted the shotgun from right hand to left and pushed through the glass double doors.

A single lamp was lighted on the rectangular checkout desk in the center of a foyer as wide as Colin's living room. A large room to their left, a larger one to their right, cluttered once with furniture and family, cluttered now with dark-metal shelves that measured the extent of the ten-foot ceilings. The aisles between were barely lighted by green-shaded bulbs hanging from the plaster on double-braided chains. Reading posters were neatly taped to the floral wallpaper, a straight chair and two benches along the entrance walls were piled with books and magazines. A stack of record albums lay on the carpeted floor beneath one of the benches.

"Hattie!" Colin yelled, peering past the desk to the staircase directly behind.

"Knew the guy who used to live here," Hugh said quietly as they moved deeper into the building. "Dumb bastard thought he'd get a leg or two up on heaven if he gave the town a library. He wouldn't spring for the money while he was alive so he willed this white elephant to the island, then hung around until he was at least ninety. Son of a bitch made napalm or something."

"Hattie!"

There was no echo, no resonance; the name struck a wall and died as if absorbed. The panes in the windows rattled like crystal.

"Place used to flood out every winter. That's why the biggest rooms are on the second floor. The guy didn't give a shit about what he kept down here. Had the gout, would you believe. The goddamned gout."

Colin wanted to tell him he wasn't interested right now in the library's history, but he needed the sound of the man's voice as he peered into the front rooms, squinting as though that would enable his vision to peel away the shadows that clung to the aisles and hid the titles of the books. Hattie wasn't answering, and if she already knew what was happening, he didn't blame her. What bothered him was the absence of the Doberman; that bloated guard dog should have been at their throats five minutes ago.

Montgomery pointed toward the stairs, then made a circling motion with his hand-Colin was to go up, he would finish looking around the first floor.

Colin nodded and brushed around the desk, stepped over a file folder lying open on the carpet, and took the stairs two at a time. The landing above was dark, the turn made slowly as he stared through the ornate balustrade at the huge single room that had been made of the upper floor.

Stacks, aisles, bookcarts, a door to his left of the landing that was Hattie's office, seldom used.

He kept the shotgun aimed straight ahead.

The wind screamed outside, living up to its name.

"Hattie, it's Colin Ross."

He heard Hugh downstairs, calling her name as well.

Shit, he thought, she can't be dead, for God's sake-and caught himself with a sour, mocking grin, wondering why it was that old ladies and children were automatically supposed to be exempt from the plagues of nightmares and the horrors of the real world. He stopped and warned himself sharply there was no difference in this case: The nightmare had taken strength from a madman who had his own rules, and it had supplanted the real. It had become the real. The dead were walking on Haven's End, and the only thing he could do was find a way to destroy them. Thinking he was still dreaming was going to get him killed.

He tried Hattie's name once more and reached behind him to tug at the office door. It was locked, and a rap of his knuckles produced no response.

A muffled clattering from the ceiling made him swing the weapon up, listening until he was satisfied it was only a family of squirrels hiding from the storm.

Another tug at the office door before he crooked the shotgun in his arm and began checking the meticulously handlettered file cards taped to the end of each stack, looking for the area where he'd find the information he needed. When he failed to locate a mythology section-silently condemning Hattie for the perversity of her own system-he checked for the Caribbean. He found half a dozen books on Cuba, Haiti, the Lesser Antilles, and the rest, but nothing specific to what he needed; they were little more than tourist books.

Neither was there anything under voodoo or satanism; under religion only the vaguest, superficial references to the pantheon brought over from Africa, embellished and altered and intensified to suit the needs of the slaves who had little else for comfort. There were no volumes at all on the occult, and he was surprised; with Hattie's famed interest in the other world, this was a singular and puzzling lack.

He wandered up and down the aisles, squinting at titles, feeling time press in on him. His breathing was shallow, his patience on short tether, and twice he raised a helpless fist against the unfairness of it all.

Then, more by accident than design, he discovered a small section on magic. It was on a bottom shelf in the far corner, tucked under a curtainless window. He glanced out as he knelt, and saw the trees rippling away from the storm, saw telephone wires quivering, and grabbed the dusty sill when he spotted lights in a house two blocks away. Atlantic Terrace, Peg's street. A cloud of mist obscured his vision for a moment, and he swiped at the pane impatiently until it passed. A moment later he was positive the lights were coming from the Adamses'.

Oh Christ, Rose, he thought, remembering the party and her intention to attend. For once in your life, woman, get someplace early.

Then he propped the shotgun against the sill, and pulled the books out one by one, flipping through them swiftly as he held them up to the fading daylight, checking indices and scowling as he realized every one dealt with stage magic. Two of them had been written to debunk the claims of charlatans and the ancients, and his silent laugh was bitter. They were so damned cocksure that science and sleight-of-hand provided all the damned answers.

He snorted in self-disgust at the attitude he'd taken-as though he had believed in spells since the day he'd been born. And maybe he had. Maybe he'd always been like Matt, but had somehow forgotten because grown-ups told him it was the right thing to do. Put aside fantasy and face up to the world. Put it aside because we've forgotten how to control it…

Kids, he thought, have more answers than we realize.

Which wasn't getting him anywhere at the moment, and he began angrily slamming the books back into place. Suddenly he frowned and cocked his head. He was positive he had heard someone coming up the stairs.

"Hugh?"

No answer.

"Hugh, you find anything?"

A prolonged creaking of careful weight on a stair.

He turned slowly, still kneeling, and pulled his weapon to him.

He was just beyond the reach of the overhead light's pale white fall, could barely mark the place where the landing swung around. The glow from downstairs wasn't strong enough to cast shadows, and though he could see through the balusters, an elephant could have made it all the way to the top before he recognized what it was.

Beneath the eaves the wind began to moan.

He rubbed a knuckle over his eyes and rose to a crouch, his throat abruptly filled with grit that made him want to cough and spit the obstruction out. He kept as close as he could to the right-hand stack, feeling the books give against his shoulder as he winced and passed through the exposure of the light. The floor was silent beneath his shoes, and it wasn't until he reached the end of the aisle that he realized the light was behind him and giving him form.

Too late. If he was being searched for, he was seen. The only thing he could do now was drop to one knee and bring the shotgun to his shoulder.

Shit, he thought; oh, Jesus, shit.

In less than a minute he saw a figure on the stairs. Moving. One step at a time. Wood shifting, and the banister groaning.

He moistened his lips with his tongue and swallowed to get rid of the sand. Slipping a finger around the trigger, he held the stock tightly against his side and rose with one hand bracing himself against the shelves. The figure reached the landing, and he held his breath, praying it wasn't someone he knew, realizing it was a vain wish since he knew everyone on the island, if only by sight. That he would have to do something against someone he once spoke with and laughed with and perhaps even kissed was a consideration he hadn't dared face. Until now. Until the figure stepped away from the railing and he tightened his finger around the trigger.

"Hugh?"

The frenzied scrabbling continued in the ceiling; a sash rattled in its frame.

"Goddamn it, Hugh, say something or I'm gonna have to shoot."

"I found the dog," Montgomery said, his voice deeper than usual. "Stuffed in a supply closet. Its head was torn off."

Colin staggered out of the aisle and sagged against the banister, lowered his gaze and saw the bloodstains on the man's shoes. He shuddered, looked up and was handed a small book.

The office door on the landing was open less than an inch.

"I found this downstairs," Hugh said, stabbing at it with a finger. "I flipped through it. I think it's what we need. I mean, I think it'll give us some clues if nothing else."

"Where the hell was it?" he said, opening the cover and trying to read as he moved toward the staircase. The door.

"It was under Oceanography."

"What?"

Montgomery shrugged, "Ask Hattie. I haven't the slightest idea."

Colin held the book close to his face, to see more clearly a reproduction of a wood-carving that depicted a group of dark-faced people in tattered clothes kneeling in a woodland clearing, their faces averted as a tall, half-naked man walked toward them, his winding sheet in tatters around his waist and legs. His eyes were blank. There was a crow on his shoulder. Behind him was an open grave and a shattered, burning coffin.

The door opened wider, hinges silent, no light behind.

On the next page was a similar scene, except here the avid worshippers were intent on a feathered priest as he beheaded a black rooster, catching its blood in a shallow wooden bowl. The sketch was in black-and-white, but he could see the color just the same.

A shadow in the doorway.

A third picture, the feathered priest again, this time standing behind a kneeling man. In the priest's hand, a dagger he had apparently just drawn over his victim's throat. Blood spilled into a bowl. The priest was drinking from another bowl slopping over with blood.

Oh Christ, he thought-Warren. Warren was the sacrifice to give Gran the power.

Montgomery made a forced gagging sound amplified by the stairwell's narrow passage. "Great," he said as he took the first step down.

And Hattie Mills lunged from her office to grab for his throat.

Hugh whirled around in terror as Colin bellowed a warning and brought up the shotgun. The blast punched the librarian square in the side and propelled her into the wall. He pumped and fired again, and she flailed in a frenzied circle, falling out of sight into the room. Through the smoke he could see nothing but her shoeless feet at the threshold. They were kicking. She made no sound. Only the thump of her heels against the worn floorboard.

Ears ringing, nose wrinkled at the stench of gunpowder, he pressed his back against the stairwell and began to descend, one step at a time, the shotgun covering the open doorway and trembling so violently his fingers began to cramp as he tried to hold it steady.

When the first foot drew back, he knew she was trying to stand.

"That is the most fantastic and juvenile story I have ever heard in my life," Cameron said from behind his desk, his hands folded pompously on the blotter. "I cannot understand how you expect me to believe such a thing."

"Frankly, Robert," Peg said, "I don't give a shit."

Cameron held up a palm to show her he was trying. "Peg, for God's sake, I'm not calling you a liar, understand."

"It sure sounds like it to me."

"Well, I'm not. But surely you can understand my position. I mean, look at it from my point of view. The Three Musketeers come charging full-bore in here like you were chasing Dillinger or something, and you give me a lot of mysterious double-talk about Lombard and Vincent. Then two of you take off on some very mysterious mission, and then I have to sit here and listen to a story that's… well, honestly, I'm trying to be charitable, Peg, but Jesus, it's a crock of shit.".

She was sitting on the club chair directly opposite the desk, slumping wearily and knowing she hadn't done much at all to convey the urgency of their discovery. And she didn't blame him for scoffing. Despite the fact that she now insisted Tess had deliberately tried to kill Colin not five hours ago, she'd refused for hours afterward to take the final step. And when she had, she was weakened by a lethargy that frightened her as much as this nightmare; it was self-defeating, and it was dangerous, but she couldn't resist it. It wasn't comforting, but it was easier than leaping to her feet and screaming.

She also knew exactly what it meant-that she was sick and tired of fighting. Fighting with Jim until he died, fighting old-timers and the old-fashioned after his death to prove she could exist on her own without a husband to protect her, fighting her mother's suffocating sympathies, fighting to hide the fears of staying alone from Matthew when he worried, fighting Colin's reluctance to propose, fighting… all of it.

All of it, for years.

And just when it seemed as if the fighting was over, the rest of her life perhaps smoothed into some semblance of comfort, the world exploded. Nuclear wars she could understand; food riots and racism and the idiocies of politicians were standards she could depend on. But not this. Definitely not this. The dead had stayed dead until Lilla had started singing.

Lilla; she hated her. Peg felt her skin warming, her breathing erratic. Hated was precisely the word she wanted. It didn't matter that the girl had somehow been made a dupe of her grandfather, if Colin was right; it didn't matter at all. And it didn't matter that Lilla had been a dear friend for the whole of the girl's life. Lilla-and she had said it herself-wasn't Lilla anymore. She was someone else, and she was a monster. She was tearing down all Peg had worked for and was threatening the life of her child. Lilla who wasn't Lilla had started this horror; Lilla had perpetuated it; Lilla, by Christ, was going to pay. "Peg, are you all right?"

"Leave her alone," Matt said sternly, standing behind the chair and taking hold of her shoulder. She lifted a hand to cover his, made a slow effort to tilt her head back and thank him with a wan smile.

"Boy," Cameron said to him sternly, "I don't think you should talk like that to me."

"Why? You're being stupid."

"Matthew!"

"Well, you are," Matt said, ignoring his mother and glaring at Cameron. "Lilla's a witch, and she's doing things to dead people. You should have seen her."

"That's ridiculous."

"He's right," she said. "If you'd seen her-"

"But I haven't, Peg, and that's the difference here, as I see it."

"And you won't believe me."

He leaned back in his chair, toyed with a pencil and looked to the ceiling. "How can I?"

"You went with Matt to lock this place up."

He shrugged. "I don't give a damn one way or the other. Doesn't look like anyone will be here tonight anyway. Goddamn storm."

"Jesus, Bob, it isn't the storm! I told you what Lilla did to the ferry. Jesus!"

"Jesus yourself," he snapped. He threw down the pencil, watched it bounce on the blotter and fall beneath the desk. "I've had enough of this bullshit. It's been very interesting, I assure you, but I have things to do, if you don't mind."

Her eyes widened. "You can't mean it. You're telling me to leave?"

"I have work, Pegeen. This doesn't run on its own, you know. Storm or no storm, crazies or no crazies, I have a business to run. If you don't mind."

"We're not going," Matt said with a sharp nod.

"Colin said we have to stay here. He's sending all the other people here, too."

"I heard, Matt, and I'll be glad to see them, if they ever come." He strained into the desk well and retrieved the pencil, stared at the eraser for a moment before his shoulders sagged and his tan turned sallow. "It's a bitch, Peg. I thought Colin was going to help me."

"He's trying," she said tightly. "I don't mean that," he said scornfully. "I mean about a hand to help me with Lombard and Vincent."

"Vincent's dead."

"So I heard."

"My God!" she said, rising, moving into an agitated pacing. "My God, are you calling Hugh Montgomery a liar too?"

When he didn't answer, she slapped at her thighs and headed out of the office. She stood for a moment in the dim light of the restaurant, her deep breaths a hissing. Then she grabbed the back of a bar stool and spun it around as hard as she could. The metal squealed softly; the bracketed lights on the dining room posts flickered pale gold. When Matt came out to join her, she hated Lilla even more.

"Mom, what about Amy and Tommy?"

"They'll be okay," she said automatically, putting a hand on his head, caressing his hair and not feeling a thing. "Chief Tabor's gone there, remember?"

"But what if he's too late?"

The fear in his voice was matched by the fear in his dark eyes, and she knelt beside him quickly, palmed his cheek, stroked his forehead. "You know Garve isn't going to let anything happen to them, Matt," she insisted gently. "He just isn't."

"But-"

"You'll have to trust me. Garve will bring the kids here as soon as he can."

His doubt was painful, and she looked away as she stood. But there was nothing else she could say. He knew what was happening, and he knew she was only trying to show him she was brave. And she wasn't. She wasn't brave at all. She was frightened to death and she was struggling to keep her bowels from letting go and if she didn't lose control in the next five minutes, it would be a goddamned miracle.

It would get a lot worse, however, if she just stood around like an idiot and thought about it. What she needed was something else to do, a way to pass the time quickly until Colin and the others returned.

What others?

Her eyes closed for a moment-another question for which she had no answers at all. "Mom."

A slow breath; she looked down. The boy looked so old; he was too young to be so old.

Another reason to kill Lilla; she stiffened when she realized that was precisely what she meant.

"Mom, the door!"

She heard the pounding, then saw the brass bar trembling at the impact. Her knees locked and her legs would not move until she remembered Hugh and Colin, out there in the storm. But she wasn't about to open the door without a weapon. A frantic look, and she flipped up the bar panel, grabbed a bottle of vodka from a stack in front of the mirror, and paid no attention to the explosion of glass and liquor as the pyramid came down. Cameron seemed to leap into the office doorway, swearing when he saw the debris, striding furiously toward her as she moved into the foyer. Matt intercepted him with a vicious kick to the shins, and as he reached down to grab at the pain, the boy nudged him hard with one hip. He tottered, fell against the railing and had to grab it to keep from pitching over and landing on a table.

By that time Peg was at the door.

She held the bottle by its neck, knowing it was as heavy and as lethal as a brick, the movies notwithstanding.

The pounding continued, and she thought she heard voices under the wind. She couldn't be sure. It could have been a wish; it could have been a memory. "Mom!"

There was only one way to find out.

The brass bar was cold, almost burning. She grabbed it and pushed down, then she jumped back and held her breath against the wind's rush.

The door swung open suddenly, and the bottle was at her shoulder as Hugh and Colin stumbled in. The bottle fell, bounced, rolled out of the way. Matt cheered, and she embraced Colin fiercely, kissed him hard and let him virtually drag her down the two steps into the dining room while he talked about the book the doctor had found. She, in turn, railed against Cameron's callous disbelief, and Matt was demanding loudly to know what had happened.

It continued until, abruptly, there was a charged, unpleasant silence.

All the words were out and gone, the reunion complete. Colin dropped to the piano bench and opened the book in his lap.

"Ross," Cameron said, making the name a threat as he moved toward him, hands fisted. "Ross, I've had enough of this. You and these other nuts get the hell out!"

Montgomery turned to him and planted a fist in his stomach. Cameron's eyes widened, narrowed, and he fell into the nearest chair, legs splayed and hands cupped protectively over his waist.

"One more word," the doctor said, brandishing the bottle Peg had dropped, "and I'll smash this across your fucking nose."

Peg sat beside Colin and took the book gently from his hands. His fingers were trying to turn the pages, but they wouldn't work properly, and she could see his frustration building to a rage. A quick glance at the title, which meant nothing to her, and she flipped to the table of contents, then back to the index. Colin grunted and pointed.

As she searched for the proper chapter, she said, "Hattie?" without daring to look up.

"The dog's dead, Peg. Hattie is…" He swallowed. "I had to use that," and he pointed shakily at the shotgun lying by his feet.

She found what she was looking for and scanned it quickly, noting as she did how oddly detached she felt, as if she were researching a term paper or looking up something for Matt that puzzled him. But when she was finished, she realized that even Cameron was waiting for some sort of confirmation.

"Well?" Hugh asked, rubbing his palms together nervously.

"He wasn't a real priest," she said. "This calls them houngans. But he wasn't one of those."

"We know that," he said. "But real or not, he knows real stuff. Knowing Gran, and from what Lilla told us, he probably wasn't satisfied practicing his- what? magic? — in a village. He would want to strike out at the whites holding the island. And those on the other islands, too. He wanted power and he wanted gold. And they wouldn't let him subvert their religion. That's probably why they kicked his ass out."

"It says…"A look to Matt. He was standing at the back curve of the piano, elbows on the top, palms around his cheeks. So old. So old. He was watching in rapt fascination, the tip of his tongue pink at the corner of his mouth. The weariness was gone. If she didn't get this right, her son was going to die… was going to die and never be buried.

"It says you create a walking dead by stealing its soul. You hold it until it does what you want, and then you release it. The dead are allowed to rest and their souls are free to go wherever it is they believe souls go." A shuddering deep breath that passed like razors down her throat. "You get the souls at the moment of death."

"Yeah," Colin said numbly. "Yeah. Shit." He rubbed a thumb under his nose, raked his hand back through his hair. "He's got them all."

The others said nothing.

Colin nodded. "He's got them all. There's a picture in there, I think it means that the gulls were killed to provide Gran with blood to… I don't know, sustain him while he was in the water. Then Warren was killed to give him strength. He was a sacrifice, so he doesn't…" He hesitated, hating now the sure sound of his voice. "He doesn't walk, like the others. Then Gran uses the others to kill even more. And he has them now. He uses them, like he uses Lilla. He tells them where to go and what to do. They're his, and since they're dead-"

Peg dropped the book on the piano. "You can kill them by pouring salt in their mouths and sewing their lips shut. They rest, see, when the owner of their soul doesn't need them at the moment."

"You… what?" Hugh said, standing, turning in a circle, slapping a hand on a table and making Cameron jump. "You're… we can't! My God, Peg, we can't! We just can't!"

She wanted to object, but she knew he was right. They weren't simply talking about people they had lived with all their lives, people they had loved as well as hated, people who had touched them in one way or another. Quite aside from all that-and it was horrid enough-there were too many of them, uncountable at this point, and too strong. She couldn't see herself sitting on Tess Mayfair's chest while someone poured a box of Diamond down her throat and put a needle to that mouth. It was unthinkable. And she doubted that Gran had arranged for any of his slaves to rest until the entire island was taken over, and he at last had his control.

"Fire," Colin said, giving her a quick reassuring look as he pushed at the book. "Look, as long as we're talking about legends we might as well pull out all the stops, right? There's no sense holding back now, unless somebody still doesn't believe that what we have here is the supernatural."

No one said a word; Cameron shook his head.

"All right, then. Fire, silver bullets, crucifixes, all that other protection. Silver bullets we don't have, and I doubt a crucifix would do anything but make Gran laugh. But these creatures are corporeal, not like vampires or things like that. Burn their bodies and they can't hurt you."

"Impossible," Hugh objected without raising his voice. "We'd have to burn down the whole town, Col. And the storm won't help, either."

"You're all crazy" Cameron muttered, pushing Montgomery to one side and staggering to the bar.

"Then what are we going to do?" Colin asked calmly. "We can't wait for them to come to us. And they will come, you know. Maybe we can knock them off their feet and run like hell. But where? Another house? And how long do we keep going before they finally trap us?"

"Fucking goddamned crazy," Cameron declared, twisting open a bottle.

Peg closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips as hard as she could. She needed the pain to remind her this was real.

The wind slammed the restaurant; in the kitchen a pot fell.

Eliot Nichols felt nothing at all, heard nothing at all as he rose from a bed of sodden leaves in the woods and made his way through the underbrush toward the Anchor Inn. The wind was trapped in the boughs above him, the light like midnight beneath the dying autumn leaves. He came out of the trees behind Anna-lee's cottage, paused for a moment, then changed direction and headed for the back door.

It was unlocked.

He went in.

There was no need to turn on a light.

Rose sat up without a sound, her blood-spattered legs tangled in a kitchen chair. She kicked it clumsily, used the table to haul herself to her feet. She paid no attention to the tatters of her bloodied housecoat, or the straggles of her hair, or the purple-yellow bruises that formed a necklace around her throat. She walked into the living room, waited, turned and headed for the front door.

Her family walked behind her.

They were swayed by the wind as they left the porch, then walked down the street toward the woods, toward the last house.

An ax was still embedded in Denise's shoulder.

There was no blood.

Carter Naughton knocked on Bill Efron's door, slammed it in with a forearm when nobody answered. Efron was on the staircase when Carter looked up, and smiled.

At the Haven's End landing of the Sterling Brothers Ferry, Lilla D'Grou walked out of the water.

"The boats!" Peg exclaimed suddenly, smiling for the first time in what seemed like years. "We've forgotten about the boats. My God, think! All we have to do is take one of the boats from the marina! Lord, we could be safe on the mainland before we know it."

"In this weather?" Hugh said skeptically.

"You'd rather die?" she countered.

"Hold it," Colin said, a hand on her wrist. "Hold it just a minute and think, you two. Sure we can get off, like Peg says, but then what? We hike into Flocks and go to the police? Tell the police, 'Hey, fellas, we have a problem out there on Haven's End, see, and we're going to need a few dozen of you to help us kill off a few dozen dead people.' " He lifted a hand, drummed it on the keyboard lid.

"We can try," Hugh said.

"We can get ourselves locked up, too."

She hated him, then, for trying to steal her escape.

"And we can't just run away either," he continued as though he regretted it. "This salt thing that Peg said, I'll bet that'll keep them away from the water, but sooner or later someone else will come out here, and…"

She hugged herself and rocked on the bench. "You're saying we can't leave until we do something about them."

"I'm saying… yes. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

She looked at him steadily for a long, unpleasant moment, then rose and began wandering among the* tables.

"Besides," Colin added, "how can we leave our friends here like this?"

She hated him even more; it just wasn't fair, making her feel guilty about creatures like that.

"Lilla," Hugh suggested. "If we get hold of Lilla, maybe she can help us. Maybe there's some way we can get her away from whatever influence Gran has on her." He stopped when he realized they were looking at him. "I… I've been thinking. I mean, it seems to me that Gran is able to do more than control her, take hold of her mind, as someone said before. I think-oh, God, listen to me-I think it more likely he's in in her mind. All that business about the salt water seems to keep him from walking around or we would have seen him before this. He would want to take care of us himself, right?"

They watched, and Peg swallowed a sudden bubble of bile.

"So he has Lil. Literally. She isn't Lil anymore, she's Gran, and that's the way he does it. So if we can get her, try to get through to the part of her that's maybe still the real her, maybe we… well, what the hell, it's worth a try, isn't it?"

"Uh-uh!" Matt said with an emphatic shake of his head.

She turned abruptly, her mouth open and the tip of one finger pressed against her lower lip. Matt. All this time she'd been talking about destroying a horror as if she were planning strategy for a high school football game, and her son had been standing there quietly, listening. Feeling God knows what, and she had ignored him completely.

She felt the tears and blinked them away angrily. Then she heard Colin say, "Why not, pal?" as if Matt were an adult with an equal voice in destruction. She ran to him and pulled him away from the piano.

"Leave him alone!" she said, shoving him behind her. "He's a boy! Leave him alone!"

"But, Mom!"

"Matthew Fletcher, don't you say one more word!"

"But Mom, you said that the guy has the souls, and the people stay dead when the souls go back, and if Gran has the souls then why chase Lilla?"

"Matthew, damn it," and she slapped him, once, hard, refusing to release him when he rocked away from the blow. He whimpered and yanked angrily at her arm, and she raised her hand to slap him again when Colin snapped her name, and she froze. She saw her son cringing, saw Hugh staring down at his shoes, saw Cameron grinning at her from behind a tall glass of scotch. Her hand burned. She pulled the boy roughly against her and held his face against her chest, stroked his hair desperately and waited for Colin to save her.

He said nothing.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Matt, I'm so sorry."

"You're right again," Colin said, and Matt turned to stare. "We can't do any of the things we've been talking about, but by God, we can get Gran. And I know where he is."

"The fish ate him," the boy protested.

"No, I don't think so." He explained quickly about his attempt to get into the shack to find Lilla, about the light he saw and the stench that drove him back. And what he thought was the deadweight in the front room. "He's in there. I'd bet on it. I bet Lil went back out after the funeral and got his body. It's the only explanation, because she isn't a witch."

"Yes she is," Matt said. Peg wanted an explanation, but Colin was already up and talking, and before she knew it she was using her hands to dry her son's tears while at the same time listening to what Colin was saying.

Gran. All the time it was Gran, and now she knew she wasn't going to die.

"Burn the damned thing," she heard herself say when Colin paused for a moment. He looked at her, and she blinked in surprise at the sound of her own voice. "Burn the shack, and you'll burn his body. It's too wet for just brush or a match. We need something flammable." She was talking too fast, and she didn't like what she was hearing. "We need something that will burn in a high wind. Gasoline! But the gas station's closed, do you know how to get into the pumps?" No one did. "The generator, then. I have spare fuel in back of the house. A couple of gallons."

"Enough, I should think," Hugh said.

"Jesus, you are all fucking off your nuts!" Cameron yelled, drinking now straight out of the bottle, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. He looked at his watch and unsuccessfully smothered a belch behind his" hand. "You know it's after six-thirty? I had a hell of a great party starting here in half an hour and you guys are talking about burning down a dead man's fucking shack. Jesus!"

They ignored him, and he waved the bottle as if he were batting away pesky flies.

Colin grabbed the shotgun and followed Hugh to the front, Peg and Matt trailing apprehensively. Before the door opened, she suggested one of them get to the police station and try to contact Garve on the patrol car radio, let him know what they'd learned and what they were going to do. Though she held her breath when Hugh said he'd do it, Colin vetoed the idea as she'd known he would the moment she'd said it. It would mean splitting them up, and though it seemed it was easy to outrun the dead, there was no sense now in taking any chances, not when they were so close to ending it.

"You wait here," he said, "and 1*11 get my car. When I get back we'll get the kerosene, then Gran."

"What if the road's flooded?" Hugh asked. "The tide's already probably covered the beach."

"Then we'll walk, Doc, we'll walk."

And he was gone before Peg had a chance to say good-bye.

It was quiet.

The chill of the stormwind vanished as soon as they turned back toward the bar. Cameron, his satin tie unknotted and his jacket thrown over a stool, lifted a glass to them in a giggling toast. Hugh took an angry step toward him; Peg grabbed his arm and stopped him with a look. Matt moved quickly toward the far side of the room, giving the muttering Cameron as much berth as he could.

Cameron leaned over the bar then and stared at the floor with a soulful shake of his head. "Brother, this is a crock. Hey, who's gonna pay for this mess, huh? Hey, Pegeen, who's gonna pay for all this liquor?" He sat back heavily. "Christ, the place smells like a distillery."

Someone knocked on the door.

Montgomery turned to answer, but Cameron was at him before he could take a step. "My place," he said, voice and face surly. "My goddamned place, you two-bit, sawed-off quack. It's my place, and I'll let them in."

"Yeah, you do that," Hugh told him, looked to Peg and shook his head.

"Goddamn party's gonna start in a minute and I ain't even ready. Jesus. Hundreds of people, and all that beautiful booze gone. Jesus, what a mess." He pressed down on the bar to get himself on his feet. "You're gonna pay for all that booze, Peg, I swear to God. That stuff costs a fortune, even wholesale." He pointed stiffly at Matt. "And that stupid kid attacked me, goddamn it!"

He opened the door, turned away from the wind.

"Well, Jesus Christ," he said with a sneer, "where in hell have you been, you jackass? Hey, Peg, I thought you told me this dumb ass was dead."

He screamed when Theo Vincent took hold of his neck and lifted him off the floor.

He screamed when Vincent walked him to the coat-room and bent him over the lower door.

He jabbed a thumb in Vincent's eye, and Vincent snapped Cameron's spine.

Peg was already running. She grabbed Matt's upper arm and dragged him through the kitchen doors, Montgomery close behind after grabbing the rifle from Cameron's office. They ran down an aisle flanked by warming ovens and grills, butcher's blocks and sinks made of stainless steel; pots quivered on hooks over counters and stoves, ladles and cleavers and long knives caught the faint light and glittered. The floor was white tile, and their heels snapped like burning logs.

They rounded a corner and raced past two cold-storage rooms and a gaping pantry, hit the side door without slowing and burst outside, almost screaming. She paused and gathered Matt into her arms, sidestepping Montgomery who couldn't slow down in time. He skidded into the hedge, barely stayed on his feet. Then they darted toward the corner of the deserted parking lot, where the high hedge had been worn away by kids cutting through from Neptune.

They emerged behind the police station, ran right beside the wooded lot.

They did not check the shadows; Peg saw the streetlights burning brighter now. It was night.

Hugh was first to the sidewalk, and he grabbed hold of the building's edge and swung himself around to a slipping, falling halt. Colin's car was at the curb, the office door open.

"Where…?" Peg gasped as she looked up and down the street. "It's only a block, Hugh. How could it take him so long to get here?"

She followed her son and Montgomery into the office, did an about face and stood on the threshold. The water was spilling over the opposite curb now as the tide reached in from the beach, flooding the gutters and pooling around the storm drains. She could almost imagine she saw waves spraying high in the trees. "Colin?" she whispered.

"He's not here, Peg, Hugh said, coming up behind her. "I don't know where the hell he is."

TWO

Colin ran hunched over and turned against the wind, his free hand up to shield his eyes from the pellets of dust and slices of leaves that clouded past him every few feet. When he managed a look across the street he noticed there was still very little apparent damage to the houses he could see, aside from the occasional porch plant dashed to the ground, chairs tipped over, a dead branch or two littering the yards. He suspected then that the storm's strongest weapon was its numbing monotony. It blew steadily, without gusting, not near hurricane force but powerful enough to make normal movement difficult. And there was always the banshee screaming-through the trees rapidly stripped of their foliage, across the rooftops, humming high-pitched and tremulous in the bouncing telephone wires. The sound was enough to alert madness, and he wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what threatened to happen after twenty-four hours: tempers disintegrating, arguments sparked and fanned by impatience, children banished unreasonably to their rooms, and more than one family wishing they hadn't thought it such a lark to remain behind and taunt the weather.

Assuming this was nothing more than a storm.

As he rounded the corner and headed for the police station, he swerved widely to avoid any indentation in the hedge wall that might hide the dead, not caring if he was being overcautious; anything less and he knew he'd be gone. And just as he reached the first window of the cell block, he saw the patrol car sitting in the middle of the intersection. Its headlights were on, and Garve was leaning out the window, beckoning urgently. Colin jumped the curb and splashed through the shallow running water, ducked around the hood and clambered inside.

"I gotta show you something," the chief said, not waiting for agreement but moving the cruiser off. Colin looked through the rear window to be sure his car was still at the curb, then shifted and explained what he and the others had come up with in the library. Even now, after accepting it, he detected a hint of disbelief in his own voice. It was someone else talking; he was back in his studio, working on Peg's portrait.

"Yeah," Garve said. "Yeah, and I thought of something else. All those folks who left on Friday? That weird we had all day? Bet it was him doing that. Far as I can see, the people who took off didn't mean a shit to Gran one way or the other. The only ones that stuck back are the ones he wanted. Col, as far as I can tell, there isn't anyone left but us. Not anyone alive, that is."

Colin considered this for a moment, and thought why not? It made about as much sense as anything else around here. But he did not like the idea that a man dead and unburied should be manipulating him as if he were little more than… he sniffed, wiped his palm over the shotgun's stock and refused to think the rest.

Then the blacktop on Neptune ran out and they were crunching loudly over gravel, the trees thickening for a hundred close yards before giving way to the expanse of the marina. When Garve pointed over the wheel, Colin gripped the edge of the dashboard and groaned.

The boats. Most were gone, and those still at their moorings had been wind-driven either onto the grassy shore or dashed hard against the docks. A few had burned. Every sailboat he could see was turned keel up.

"The storm?" he asked hoarsely, hopelessly.

"I thought so until I checked, and I doubt it now. I think at least half of them were untied or had their lines cut through. Took the binoculars and checked the mainland, what I could see of it. Spotted Ed Raines' trawler beached there, a couple of others. Lilla, probably. Gran isn't stupid."

He turned his gaze to the large open workbarn, and the house.

"No one," Garve told him, not needing a question. "The place is empty. I don't recall him leaving, but there's a few windows busted and I can't tell if they were broken into or just broken."

"Nothing left?" he asked dejectedly.

"I didn't say that." Tabor nodded toward the rocky shore just west of the house. "I found a small lifeboat that hadn't been bashed up. Dragged it into the trees. I think it's from the trawler."

"Then we can get off."

"Yeah. Eventually."

He eased the car forward to the end of the gravel, turned over the lawn and started to back up. The water was running high, white-foamed, regularly sloshing over the docks and leaving froth behind. As Colin watched, more numbed than dismayed, a small red speedboat was rammed repeatedly into a larger, sleek cabin cruiser; from the damage done to both hulls, he knew it must have been going on for hours. Then the two separated with a lurch, and the speedboat began to sink, submerging as far as its remaining mooring line would permit; the cabin cruiser listed sharply, the canvas awning over its flying bridge snapping at the air and tearing itself to writhing ribbons.

"This end of the island always floods first," Garve said as he maneuvered the car back toward town. "Lower, see. I just hope Alex and Sue were able to get the kids-"

He broke off when Colin turned away from the docks, gagged and pointed up the road.

Someone was standing in the middle of the gravel, and there were two others behind him.

It was Eliot, and his left arm was missing, the tattered ends of his uniform's shoulder curled away to expose bone and red-gray flesh. The others were Amy and Tommy Fox, Amy in jeans and a torn shirt, Tommy in a bathing suit, lacerations redly marking his thin chest.

Garve made a sound almost like sobbing; Colin looked for a way for the car to go around, but the trees were too close on the left, and the house too close on the right. If they were going to get back to the police station, they'd have to run the deputy and the children down.

"I… can't," the chief said, strangling the steering wheel.

"C'mon, Grave," he urged almost tearfully. "Jesus, C'mon."

Tabor rolled down the window and stuck out his head. "God damn you, Eliot! God damn you!"

Colin grabbed for his shoulder, threw himself back when a shadow appeared through the mist on the driver's side. Tabor yelped and closed the window, wiping tears from his face as the shadow began thumping on the door. He cringed away, fumbling for his revolver. Colin didn't know whether to try to shoot through the windshield or scream at the chief to get moving. Then Nichols approached the hood and began rocking the car violently while the children came to Colin's side and pounded their fists against the window.

They said nothing.

They stared, and the only sound was the rhythmic creaking of the car and the staccato crack of small knuckles.

He yelled and tried to bring the shotgun up, but Tabor was frantically trying to clear off his seatbelt, his elbow and hand slamming Colin in the ribs. He yelled even louder when the mist cleared for a moment and he saw Susan Fox struggling with the handle. He thought she was yelling back until he realized that her jaw had been broken and she couldn't close her mouth; neither could she swallow, and water ran freely over her teeth and bruised lip.

El slammed his palms on the hood.

Amy and Tommy had rocks now and had turned the window to spider webbing.

"Out!" Colin said, slapping Garve's shoulder. He gripped his weapon tightly, squirmed until his feet were in position against the door. When Tabor jabbed a finger into his shoulder signaling he was ready, Colin reached forward awkwardly, pulled up the lock button and at the same time kicked out viciously. The children fell away and back without a sound, and he was out and running, Tabor scrambling right behind him.

They raced past the front of the house-the front door was battered open, canted on one hinge- swerved to avoid the brick wishing well, and plunged directly into the woods without looking back. The patrol car's horn began to blare, and the siren shrieked madly over the voice of the Screamer.

In the trees they were caught in a maelstrom of hornets as the windstorm wrenched the remaining leaves from their places and propelled them between the boles. Edges stung and slashed, twigs jabbed for their eyes and lanced their cheeks and necks, hollows and depressions filled in rapidly and caused them more than once to go down on one knee because they thought they were on solid ground. Then Garve snared Colin's arm and began guiding him roughly to the left, and he could see through the bare branches the fractured outlines of houses.

Peg, he thought, for God's sake wait.

The wind screamed, and he wanted to scream back.

They lashed and kneed their way through a low wall of shrubs, flailed and stumbled out over the low curbing onto Ocean Avenue directly in front of Hugh

Montgomery's house. The street was deserted, an automobile midway up the long block tipped over on its side.

Colin's lungs burned, his throat was coarsely dry, and a pinprick of pain centered and spread through his left ankle. He gulped for air and raised his face to the sky, cornered his second wind and was about to move on, when Garve spotted the open office door. The chief slowed, apprehensive and indecisive, trotting several paces backward to check the forest behind them before he cut to his left and sprinted up the driveway. Colin shouted at him angrily and followed with a fruitless curse, slowing as Tabor stopped at the door and peered inside.

Neither could see anything but the wind-torn reception area, the open door to the examination room at the end of the short paneled hallway. This black-leather table had been overturned, a medicine cabinet and mirror smashed on top of it. Plastic vials rolled without pattern across the linoleum, and a wide arm of gauze bandage fluttered weakly against the baseboard.

They listened, and heard nothing.

Tabor moved forward cautiously, Colin impatiently behind. In the passageway they saw, passed, and returned to a narrow closet door battered but unbroken. Garve motioned him away from it, took the other side and lifted a hand. Hesitated. Moistened his lips and slammed a fist against the hinge. They dropped instantly to the floor when a shot was fired through the wood and a framed print of a pheasant in flight shattered on the opposite wall.

"No!" Garve shouted when another shot was fired. "Jesus, it's us!"

The brass knob turned slowly, and Colin aimed at the crack as the door opened in tiny fits and jerks. A moment later Annalee stumbled out, her eyes glittering tears, her cheeks streaked with dried blood. Garve took her instantly, embraced her, and guided her gently into the reception room to sit her down on the couch. Her long hair was damp and matted dark, her nurse's uniform torn at the seams under her arms and across her shoulders. Colin stood guard at the entrance. Garve held her upper arms until her trembling ceased, and he was able to fill her in on most of what had happened.

She doubted none of it. A flare of startled disbelief was extinguished when Colin corroborated in silence.

"They… came here," she said, the words more like sobbing. "God, they came, three or four of them. I thought Amy had hurt herself and I almost… then she threw a lamp at me and Tommy tried to rip off my uniform and they were so damned strong… the closet… I ran through the house but none of the phones were working, so I came back and hid in the closet. I couldn't go outside. Nichols was out there, down by the sidewalk."

"It's all right now, Lee, you're with us," Garve said, his gentle tone belied by the lowering of his brow. "You want some water?"

"God, no! I need… I need…" Her teeth clattered, her hands began to jump, and Tabor gathered her to his chest and rocked her for several minutes, stroking her hair and looking at Colin. Though he was anxious to get back, Colin smiled quickly, looked outside and finally said, "Zombies."

"What?"

"I said they're zombies."

Garve shuddered. "For a minute there I thought you said they were vampires."

"What's the difference?" he said in resignation. "What's the goddamned difference?" It was a Saturday matinee come alive, and there was no difference at all. He let a heartbeat pass before he added, "We have to get going, Garve. Peg and the boy are waiting for us at the restaurant."

Annalee insisted she was all right when Garve protested the rush, and they huddled at the door for the length of a scream before they plunged outside and began to hurry down the sidewalk. Lee's bravado notwithstanding, they could neither run nor trot; a fast walk was all the storm and her nerves would permit them until they finally reached the corner and looked over to the Clipper Run.

Bridge Road was an inch or more deep in sea water along its gutters, and he estimated only an hour of two more before the storm drains were filled to overflowing. It was bad enough that the daylight had virtually slipped out of the air; there were only the streetlights now, rocking on their bases, their light blurring to a flat haze that barely reached the ground.

They crossed and made for the entrance, a step away from running when Colin slapped Garve's chest.

The door was open.

"Shit," he whispered. "Oh shit!"

When he eased up the walk he could see Cameron's body lying over the cloakroom door. The wind had puffed one trouser leg, and was rippling the other. His shoes had fallen off.

Despite his own warning to the others, the sight of the dead man smothered all caution. He charged into the restaurant calling Peg and Matt, paused only long enough to see that the dining room was empty before checking the office to find that empty as well. He staggered against the door frame and took several deep breaths, refusing to believe that Gran had somehow trapped them, unsure what to do if that had in fact happened.

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

He turned with a soundless shout, and Garve slapped the shotgun's barrel away from his face.

"Out the back," Tabor said, and pushed through the kitchen doors. Colin followed, incredibly and frighteningly tired, his vision softened and his reflexes too slow as he walked through the maze of white counters and mirrored appliances and out the side exit, not realizing until the wind revived them that Annalee had been holding his hand. She lay an arm around his shoulder and kept him in Tabor's wake, releasing him only when they reached the hedgebreak and pushed through.

Then he was running again, around the corner of the police station and hurtling through the door-but the office was empty.

"Peg! Matt!"

He had turned to tell the others they had missed them again, heard someone call his name, back in the cell block. He dropped the shotgun an Nichols' desk and ran, took hold of the doorjamb to stop him when he saw the trio sitting in the middle cell.

"It seemed," Peg said, "the safest place."

Hugh grinned.

Matt reached through the bars, groping for his hand.

They arranged themselves in the front office as comfortably as they could, most of them choosing a way to see through the front door's pane, to watch the leaves streak by in tricolor armies, to charge the building and scrape at the plywood. The water still fell over the curbing, the drains still swallowed, but high tide was less than four hours away, and unless the storm abated soon they wouldn't even be able to use the cars.

Then Annalee said, "They know where we are," and there was an uneasy stirring, a shifting. Colin put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. But it was true; Gran in whatever forms he could take to direct his revenge was evidently able to ferret them out, and Colin couldn't help wondering again if they weren't being herded. He wouldn't put it past the old man. Enemies taken one by one was perhaps a more satisfying situation; but enemies taken in a group was ill-guided justice delivered in exultation.

The idea should have depressed him, sent him back to the despair he'd felt when he had understood what the dead sought. Yet it didn't. The more he considered it the more a buoyancy filled his chest like a slow-rising bubble. It excited him, revitalized him-Gran in a hurry might just mean Gran against a deadline, that whatever he had done to reassure his return was something less than permanent. A day. Two days. Certainly not more. He tucked his chin toward his chest and stared at the floor, at the damp footprints drying to shadows, and he wondered further if Gran in his hatred had failed to reckon on Lilla's last attempts to warn them, or had underestimated their acceptance of something usually left to campfire stories and films of the thirties. It was possible.

It had to be possible or they had no chance at all.

When he had assembled it, reordered it, and put it to the rest, there were no serious objections.

"You're surely not suggesting we wait him out," Hugh said grimly. "You're not, are you, Colin?"

"No. Not a bit."

"Just so I know."

"Why not?" Peg asked, though there was no contradiction in the question.

"Doubt," he said. "As long as there's doubt we don't dare take the chance."

She agreed, and began dusting at her knees. "There's something else," she said.

They waited.

"Suppose… suppose we're wrong and he doesn't have this deadline we've assumed. Suppose he can go on unless we take care of him." Her hands drifted up to her lap, still dusting. "Then if they get to the mainland-"

"Yes," Colin interrupted when he saw the look on Matt's face.

"Then I suggest we stop speculating and get on with it," Hugh said, standing. "We should take both cars, though, in case one conks out. Gran's place is fairly high on the slope, as I recall, so we shouldn't have trouble with the tide. Not yet."

"The ladies," Garve said then, looking to Matt to include him as well. "I don't think they should come with us."

"No," Annalee and Peg protested together.

"Right," Colin said. "The last time we split up we nearly had a disaster. Better we should do k in a group."

"In a mob," Hugh said sourly. When Colin looked at him, surprised, the doctor raised a shoulder. "A mob, right? That's what we are. The peasants charging the windmill at the end of Frankenstein, burn the sucker down and scatter the ashes." Then he grinned. "Always wanted to be a peasant. Not for life, you understand, but just for a while."

"Well, peasant," Colin said in relief, "let's get the torches and move out."

No one, however, hurried for the door. They were subdued, pleased that Hugh had regained his humor, less than pleased they had to confront a specter they'd once thought themselves incapable of accepting. Their expressions were the same: anxious, angry, let's be done with it so I can wake up and scream.

Peg smoothed Matthew's hair and kissed him on the cheek, not caring when he squirmed and protested with a quiet, "Mom." Colin filled his trouser pockets with shells, made sure both Peg and Hugh were given the other shotguns; Garve took a rifle, Annalee the same. When Matt complained he was the only one without a weapon, Tabor, without asking the boy's mother, handed him a revolver and pointed to the safety. Matt held it gingerly, his expression solemn as it dwarfed his small grip, then tucked it into his waistband and took his mother's hand to lead her to Colin's car. Hugh and his nurse rode with the chief.

The windshield fogged over the moment Colin turned on the ignition, Matt in the middle switched on the defroster. When the glass cleared he turned on the wipers, and it was the only sound they heard as they pulled away from the curb.

They made only one stop, at the Fletcher house to take the red cans of kerosene from the shed in the backyard and put them in Tabor's trunk. They worked without a sound, none wanting to look at the empty house around them.

Then they were back on the road, heading south out of town.

The headlights sparkled as the mist fell out of the dark.

The water sweeping across the road rose whitely against the tires.

"Mom," Matt said as they passed the gas station and headed into the woods, "what about Lilla?"

She refused to answer; Colin saw her hands tighten on the barrel.

"What about her, pal?" he said into the silence.

"She isn't dead, is she?"

"No."

"Then shouldn't we try to save her, too?"

"No!" Peg said, scarcely parting her lips. "If she's alive-"

"Matt," Colin said quickly, "when we do what we have to at Gran's, we'll see. Right now, though, there's nothing left of the Lilla we used to know. You saw that when we had her before. I think… I think that her trying to help us did something to her mind. That part of it we knew is long gone, I'm afraid."

"There's doctors for that, though," he persisted. "She talked to me in the jail. I mean, she really talked to me. She called me Little Matt, just like always."

He heard the boy's anguish, and felt his mother's rage. "Matt, for what we've all been through today, there are no doctors at all. And none for Lilla, either."

"It isn't fair," he pouted. "It isn't fair. I never met a real witch before. It isn't fair."

"She deserves to die," Peg said heatedly. Defiance pulled at her lips when she turned to look at Colin. "Well, she does! She started all this, and it won't end until she's dead."

"That's Gran, Peg," he said calmly. "That's Gran. Lilla never has been anything more than a dupe."

"What's a dupe?" Matt said.

"A dupe is a fool who believes someone who's lying," his mother said, staring hard out the side window. "Gran wasn't lying, and Lilla knew it."

Colin opened his mouth to disagree, changed his mind and concentrated on his driving. Peg's hostility bothered him a great deal, though he thought he understood why. And he was guiltily pleased that Matt had voiced what he'd been thinking himself. It was entirely possible that Lilla's retreat would be reversed when Gran was taken care of, and he didn't think it right they abandon her when all was done.

The wind shoved the car hard to the right, and his wrists were beginning to ache with the effort to keep the wheels straight.

Slow, he ordered when he felt the car's acceleration. Slow, you jackass, or you'll take out a tree.

Matt cleared his throat.

A rock thumped under a tire and they all held their breath.

The windshield wipers seemed louder, more final.

"Oh," Peg said as they passed between the twin motels.

He looked, and nearly braked. On the side of the road was Carter Naughton, walking. The headlights paled him, took him out of the dark until the car was abreast. He did not turn his head; he staggered sideways, righted, and kept on walking.

Twenty yards later they passed Tess Mayfair; on the left side Mitch and Rose Adams.

Pebbles rattled against the undercarriage, and a dead leaf plastered itself against Colin's window.

Denise was with her brother fifty yards along; the ax was gone from her shoulder, the naked bone stark and obscenely clean in the passing light.

"What are you doing!" Peg whispered, and he started, not realizing he'd taken his foot off the pedal.

Alex Fox, in his best suit.

Susan behind him.

The patrol car's horn blared, and he gasped while Peg grabbed for Matthew. The horn blared again. None of the dead looked around or slowed.

There was still sufficient light to outline the treetops, to give black substance to the swift-sailing clouds.

Muriel North beside Reverend Otter, whose head rocked on what little muscle had been left at his dying.

The temperature in the car rose until Colin cranked down his window an inch or two, no more. The wind was cut to a breeze, and it cooled him though the air itself was warm.

Hattie Mills, her blouse shredded and her black skirt in ribbons down her right side. Colin refused to watch her, though he felt Peg's gaze shift to see his reaction.

"They're gonna see Gran," Matt said matter-of-factly. His thumb rubbed over the rough butt of his gun.

Bill Efron, his vest open and his thick white hair spotted with mud.

Michael Lombard, carrying Bob Cameron.

Theo Vincent, dragging a bar stool in each hand.

Matt knelt on the seat and stared intently out the rear window. "Gee," he said softly. "Gee."

"Goddamn it, Matthew!" Peg exploded. She grabbed the back of his neck and forced him to turn around. "This isn't a game! This isn't a goddamned game!" Spittle bubbled in the corners of her mouth and she wiped it away with a darting, rigid finger.

"I know that," Matt said, jerking his head to shake his mother's hand away. "I know that."

Amy and Tommy Fox walked the center line. Colin slowed and drifted around them. Water from the tires eddied around their ankles and up over their shoes. Tommy carried a rock; Amy's hands were empty.

They passed no one else, and when he could no longer see the children in the rearview mirror he pulled over slightly and rolled the window down the rest of the way. He waved the patrol car alongside, and waited for Annalee to bring hers down too.

"Matt thinks they're going to Gran's," he shouted over the storm.

The others nodded. Hugh leaned forward, green-faced, his glasses blind. "Less time than we thought."

"Yeah."

"Maybe we should-"

Colin didn't hear the rest. Tabor suddenly accelerated as the island began to rise and the road lost its shallow river. He sounded the horn twice, twice more, and Colin followed closely despite his struggling with the wind. The wheels shimmied, and he gritted his teeth. Spray from the cruiser nearly blinded him until he backed off. Matt leaned forward eagerly, biting his lower lip until his mother ordered him into the back. He did not argue. He clambered over the seat and folded his arms on the rear shelf, watching for signs the dead were in pursuit.

Too fast, Colin thought as he fought to keep the car — on the road, we're going too damned-

Suddenly the patrol car's brake lights flared, and it began to slide inexorably to the right, sharply to the left, finally skewed into a complete turn while still moving forward. Peg shouted wordlessly as Colin swerved to avoid the skidding vehicle, puzzled when he saw streaks of black on the tarmac. Then his own car lost its traction. He grunted, ignored Peg's warning when he saw the pair of downed trees stretched across the road. Tabor was unable to avoid the storm-born deadfall, and Colin heard the ripping of metal as the cruiser slammed broadside into the first trunk.

He spun the wheel desperately, touching the brake pedal lightly as he found himself helplessly caught in a spin. Then the right front wheel held and they were jolted past the uprooted trees, branches scratching and screeching like nails along the side. Peg smothered a scream behind her hands. Matt instantly dropped to the floorboard and covered his head with his arms. The car jounced over the shoulder, and Colin threw up his hands as they plowed through the picket fence at the boarding house lawn.

Slats flew up and to the side, speared one headlight, cracked against the doors.

The brakes locked, and they skidded across the muddy lawn.

"Down!" he shouted, and threw himself to one side, grabbing Peg as he did and forcing her beneath him.

The car slammed into the latice-work beneath the front porch, struck a brick-and-concrete post and shoved it two feet off its base before momentum was spent and the porch collapsed around them. Colin was thrown up and back, and when the automobile stopped, his forehead struck the dash. He groaned and fought for breath. He felt his heart racing, saw slashes of red, of white, of deep midnight black scale at him like knives. He closed his eyes, but the knives kept coming and he couldn't decide if he should call out or swallow what tasted like blood in his mouth.

There was something sticky and wet on his chin, something prodding his back, something trying to tell him he wasn't alone.

He tried to sit up, had no idea where he was or how he was trapped.

He tasted salt, he tasted blood, and he thought he heard Matt crying before the red and the white gave way to the black, and the last thing he heard was the wind hissing through broken glass.

Matt hurt.

The back of his neck, the length of his spine, the side of his left arm stung and throbbed, and for a terrifying moment he thought his father had come back to beat him for being bad. There were funny colors in his head for several unnerving seconds, then funny sounds in his ears until he uncoiled stiffly and sat up with a sigh. He could see nothing over the back of the seat, and when he looked to the rear window he saw a crisscross of splintered wood, a waterfall of dust. Metal creaked, and something thumped onto the trunk. A soft hissing. A faint dripping. A startling rain of planks, as more of the porch flooring broke loose and gave way.

Gritting his teeth and swallowing acid that filled his mouth, he pressed a palm against the seat and pushed himself up. His lips quivered, and his eyes filled with tears not caused just by the pain. Colin was lying half under the steering wheel like a doll discarded in anger; his mother was still sitting up, her head tilted to one side, her cheek on her shoulder. Blood on the dashboard. Blood on her shirt. Colin's face was red and shining like sweat.

He couldn't tell if they were breathing.

The keys in the ignition clinked like dead wind chimes.

He reached for his mother's shoulder and shook it, tenderly, not wanting to hurt her any more than she was. He whispered her name, he whispered Colin's, and he cried. Then he scolded himself for wasting time. They were unconscious and couldn't hear him. He would have to get out and fetch Chief Tabor to help.

He reached over the seat and pulled back the door handle, pushed and whimpered when the door didn't budge.

The car wobbled as if it were balanced on a stick.

He sniffed and wiped a sleeve under his nose.

He wished the tiny back windows could be rolled down so he could slip out.

He tried the door again, and knew he couldn't do it from the angle he was using. Gingerly, then, sucking in air loudly, he climbed into the front, crying out softly when his mother slipped sideways and her right hand fell onto Colin's bloodied hair. He tried not to look at them, tried not to compare them to the way he had seen Tess Mayfair.

They're not breathing.

Yes they are! Yes they are!

He put his shoulder to the door and pushed with all his might, filling his cheeks, tightening his stomach; he felt the door give.

Another shove and a kick, and a spattering of dust covered his head.

Again, and again, until there was just enough space for him to slide out of the car.

"Hang on, Mom," he said, swallowing and wanting desperately to give her a hug. "Hang on. I'll be back. Hang on, please. Please!"

Still crying and not caring, he squirmed out and made his way on hands and knees to the rear bumper. He could see the outside. There was a large gap between two sections of flooring, and he hurried as fast as he dared through it, fell over a length of railing and landed down on the wet grass.

He sobbed, and scrambled to his feet. The pain was still there but he put it away in a mind place that let him stagger to the gap where the car had gone through the fence. He couldn't see over the deadfall, but he could see the cruiser's lights shining into the woods on the other side.

There was nothing to hear no matter how hard he tried.

A deep breath for courage, and he took a step forward, reined in when he saw Amy Fox walking into the light with her brother.

He started to call them, and then he remembered.

He looked down at his shoes and saw earthworms swarming over the sidewalk and the curb, driven out of the ground by the influx of water.

Amy's head began to swivel in his direction.

His hand went to his waist, and he looked down when he couldn't find the butt of his revolver. It was gone. It had fallen out in the accident, and Amy's head was still turning. He whirled around and raced wildly back toward the car, veered and climbed nimbly onto the sagging porch, through the open front door and threw himself against the wall of the entry hall. He watched. He waited. They'll find you, he thought, and staggered deeper into the house, saw a door under the staircase, pulled it open and fell inside. It closed by itself. It was dark and it was warm. He hurt so much he wanted to scream.

He listened, then. Listened for Amy and Tommy wanting him to play. He prayed his mother and Colin would stay in the car. Amy and Tommy would find them if they didn't. Then the pain came again; the dark began to spin, the funny lights returned, and he slumped over to the floor.

Worms and fish of a hundred different colors, slipping between his fingers as he tried to stop them from eating and nibbling their way through his stomach; worms with horns, and fish with fangs instead of teeth, gnawing on his arms and chewing on his legs and spinning away from screams no one heard but himself; worms and fish and ugly white things that burrowed and tunneled and popped out through his chest with dark grinning faces that looked just like Gran.

A colorless corridor swarming with sea gulls; a colorless hallway flooded by the sea; a room, his room, filled to the windowsill with gleaming black kelp whose fronds groped for him when he tried vainly to raise the sash, lashed at him when he tried vainly to push through to the door, snagged his elbows and neck when he took out his penknife and tried to stab them away.

Worms, and fish, and the sea water rising, and no sign of his mother and no sign of Colin, and the light beginning to fade and he was afraid of the dark because it talked to him nicely, and whispered to him sweetly, and filled swiftly with fog that drew away, and glowed, and twisted into a serpent that opened its red mouth and swallowed him without a sound, sucked him into a place where he saw a dim light, a dimming light, a curiously dim light that…

… made him wince and groan when he blinked his eyes and sat up. Disorientation had him staring at nothing until he remembered Amy Fox, the trees, and the car. Then there were things in the closet with him, touching his head and face, groping for his throat. He thrashed and yelled, reached up to bat them away until his hand closed on one and he realized with a gasping it was only a coat sleeve.

He whimpered and lowered his head, sobbed and swallowed air until the shaking stopped. Then he prodded his chest and legs to be sure he was still in one piece and the worms and fish hadn't gotten him. He reached up for the latch, but the door wouldn't open. He stood and pulled frantically, calling out once for someone to hear him, stopped when he thought it might be Tommy who would. He pulled again, shook his head at his mistake, and pushed, kicked at the base until the door swung out and he was propelled by his momentum into the opposite wall. He made his way to the door.

The weakened porch roof had sagged, and he couldn't see most of the floor, but Amy was gone and so was her brother.

A strand of mist spiraled up from the lawn.

Mom!

Less frantic now, but no less hurried, he inched along the front of the house until he reached the steps, jumped and scrambled around to the place where the automobile had plowed under and stopped.

"Mom! Mr. Ross!"

He couldn't see through the rear window, and he didn't want to go under there again; the wood was dangling spikes into the dark and something moaned in the shadows every time the wind strengthened.

He climbed across the slippery debris, balancing himself, almost holding his breath. "Mom!" he said as he wrenched at the door and prepared to pull her out. "Mom, I'm-"

She was gone. Mr. Ross was gone. There was blood on the seat; the keys were still in the ignition. He leaned in to check the back; there was nothing there, either. He couldn't even see the gun the police chief had lent him.

He backed out painfully, backed all the way to the lawn where he sat on the grass and stared mutely at the house. He was too late. He just knew it. He had run away from Amy and Tommy, had let his mother down, had let Colin down, and now they were with them.

Now they were with Gran.

And he was all alone.

"Mom," he whispered.

The worms, and the fish, and the dark calling sweetly…

The wind reached out of the blackening sky and shoved his hair into his eyes. He brushed it away angrily and swayed to his feet.

Gone. Captured, he was certain.

He had wanted to help them, had wanted to save them, and he hadn't done anything but run away and hide.

Numbly, not even sure if he were still in pain, he shuffled across the lawn. After a moment he took hold of a loose slat from the ruined fence, yanked it free effortlessly, and held it at his waist. It probably wouldn't help, but it would be better than nothing. He felt tears, then, and let them fall for several seconds before wiping them away with his sleeve and heading for the deadfall.

The patrol car was still there.

There was no one inside.

The chief, then, and Doctor Montgomery, and his tall, pretty nurse. They were gone. They were all gone. And he was alone.

They were going to Gran's shack, to burn it, he remembered. Maybe he could burn it instead. Maybe he could take that dead old man by the throat and toss him back into the water where he came from. Maybe he could save the world from Gran turning it into things.

Maybe.

And maybe he could do nothing. He had no matches and no fuel and the wind was so strong that even if he did he probably wouldn't make it.

Besides, there was still Amy and Tommy, still his mother and Colin. And he didn't want to see them the way they had to be now.

Damn Gran and Lilla for-

He turned abruptly, as if he'd heard someone behind him.

Lilla! His eyes shifted from side to side while he chewed on a corner of his mouth.

Lilla. No matter what anyone said, she was still alive even if she was crazy, and maybe between the two of them they could get off the island and bring back help for his mother. She probably wasn't really dead anyway, right? She and Colin were probably just under some kind of spell, and Lilla was a witch so she would know the right words to bring everyone back.

And there was that boat the chief talked about, the one he saved at the marina.

He started to walk toward the end of the road.

It might work. It would work. Lilla was his friend from the days before all the dying, and she remembered him enough to look for him at Amy's, right? She didn't hurt him then, right? Even if Gran was inside her-though he didn't know how-she wouldn't hurt him because he had been Gran's favorite, they were going to be kings. So she was really his friend. She knew he was her friend, too, like at the jail when she showed him how to bring on the fog.

And if they could get that boat and go for the police…

He began to run.

Lilla. Crazy Lilla.

He swallowed and promised his mother he'd be back before she knew it, back with the right words and the right way to move his hands and the right everything and before she knew it she wouldn't have to walk that way anymore or do what Gran said or be hurt or anything. He promised her as he sprinted off the tarmac onto the path that led to the cliffs.

He knew where Lilla was.

He wasn't the only one who liked to crawl around in the caves and hunt for buried treasure and look for pirate bones all left in little piles; he'd seen her there a lot, and if she was afraid of Gran like Colin said she was, then it was the perfect place to hide. The other things couldn't get her there, because look what happened to old, fat Tessie Mayfair when she tried to get Colin. Fell right off. She fell right off and took forever to get back.

Though he didn't know why, he knew it had something to do with the salt in the water. He ran over the spongy ground, swinging the picket sword back and forth ahead of him, ducking when a spray of leaves whispered and sliced past his face, jumping over dead branches tossed to the ground by the wind. It was dark in here, but not as dark as it would be when night finally came. Dark, but not as dark as the day before when all the leaves were on the trees.

And there were darker shapes deeper in the woods that paced him and ran ahead of him. He wasn't sure who they were, or if it was only his imagination, and purpose gave way to panic as he tried to lengthen his stride.

His chest hurt. His left arm hurt. There was a stinging inside his head that wouldn't go away, and a roaring in one ear that made him dizzy.

He didn't dare stop. He had to stop. Just for a minute, it wouldn't take long, just for a minute so he could catch his breath and start all over.

He slowed, gulping and holding his right side, bending over, coughing, and spitting dryly on the ground.

Then he straightened and reminded himself what he had to do.

He ran hard, heard a thrashing, ran as hard as he could, and came around the last turn before the trees fell away.

Eliot Nichols stood in the path, watching.

Matt slipped and skidded to a stop just before he ran into the deputy, holding out the makeshift sword and slashing it back and forth while he looked desperately around him.

Nichols moved toward him, empty shirt sleeve flapping like a broken wing, face pale, eyes dead white.

"Go away," Matt said huskily, not wanting to leave the path in case there were others out there waiting. "Go away, you son of a bitch."

Eliot reached out, his hand streaked with dried mud and blood.

Matt shouted as loudly as he could and threw the picket at Nichols' head. It struck the deputy flat on the mouth and snapped his head back as if he'd been shot.

Matt bolted off the path, batted away the brush, took a moss-covered log in a leap and landed still running. He didn't look back; there were too many things trying to snare him and trip him and pull him down into the mud, too many dark places where he knew he heard voices telling him to join them.

He swerved around a boulder, ducked under a branch, and tripped over something he couldn't see at his feet.

He yelled as he fell, turned as he hit the ground and found himself crouched on the flat above the cliffs. He was alone.

Above him the Screamer was ripping apart the clouds, allowing him just enough light to see the ocean below-white, and gray, and a belligerent, swirling black. The wind shrieked and the Atlantic bellowed; the clouds tore themselves to writhing shreds and the waves sideswiped the cliff face on their way to the mainland.

Harsh stinging spray drenched him instantly, and he blinked away the water as he crawled to the spot from which he knew he could climb down. He looked over the edge. The tide was in and high; another twenty feet and the most persistent waves would ride over the top. He licked his lips and tasted salt. If Lilla was down there, then there was only one place she could be. If she'd climbed any lower she would have drowned by now.

He willed her to be alive.

He willed her not to be as crazy as they thought.

He wiped his hands on his shirt and lowered himself over the edge.

The rock was slippery and dark, almost green, and the worn spots on the steep pathway were filled with trembling water.

His ears ached from the waves that slammed the rock below him.

His chest ached, and his knees. When he reached the first ledge he dropped against the rock face and covered his eyes with his hands.

The cave was less than six feet away.

All he had to do was get up and move over, climb over a low mound of smooth stone and he'd be there.

That was all, and he didn't want to do it.

"Mom," he whispered, "Mom. Mom."

If Lilla wasn't there, then his Mom was really dead.

A wave hunched and surged without breaking, sliding off the cliff face and falling back into its trough.

He grunted, not sure if the water on his face was from the ocean or his tears, and staggered to his feet. The wind shoved him back down. He cried out as he began a slow slide toward the edge, clawed at the rough path until he felt the sliding stop. He wanted to be back in school; he wanted to be in his room watching James Bond and Christopher Lee; he wanted to be in Colin's studio, looking at all the paintings Colin said were no good but he was keeping them around just to keep his ego down. He didn't know what ego was, but if Colin said that was important then he guessed it had to be. He wanted to be up top again. He wanted…

He sobbed, and crawled, and made it to the mound that rose as high as his head. He reached up and gripped the top, pulled himself to his knees and with a shout threw himself over.

He fell only two feet, slid two feet more under the cave's ragged overhang. The mouth was only four feet across, but the cave itself dug twenty feet into the island, the roof lifting enough so that someone like him could stand.

He sat up, pulled his legs under him and knelt.

"Lilla?"

He frowned as he tried to listen for an answer, peering into the dark to see if he could spot her. "Lilla?"

He cupped his hands around his mouth and called her name again before he took a deep breath and moved deeper inside.

There was no light at all now.

At his back, the ocean.

The cave widened, and the battle sound of the surf was so loud it was almost silent.

Halfway to the back he began to cry.

She was gone. He was wrong, and she wasn't here. There was nothing on the ground that he could see, no candles, no lanterns, no flashlights. She wasn't here, and he had wasted all this time for nothing.

He dropped to his knees heavily.

Not here. Lilla wasn't here.

His mother and Colin were dead.

He drew up his legs and folded his arms around his calves, pushed his chin to his knee and let the tears come. He didn't care if he sounded like a baby. He didn't care.

"Aw, nuts," he sobbed. "Nuts. Goddamn."

Then he looked up and saw the shadow in the cave.

It was outlined by the last of the day's light, and it was moving toward him. Slowly. Without a sound. Its hands at its side, its head lowered.

He couldn't pull away; he was as far back against the wall as he could go, and he was so awfully tired that all he could do was shake his head. If there were words to stop the shadow he would have said them, but Lilla had all the words and he was just a kid and now he was going to be just like his mother.

The figure stopped.

It knelt before him.

It leaned close so he could see it.

"Hello, Little Matt," said Lilla with a smile, in a voice he wasn't sure was actually her own. "I sent the wind away. Can I play with you now?"

THREE

Colin could think of nothing to say, and for a moment wished he'd been killed in the accident. As it was, he felt as though a great mass of living tissue had been scooped out of his chest and replaced with cold lead. A thin line of acid scorched across his forehead, and he stifled a groan. Peg didn't need that; she was beside him now, weeping silently as they followed Garve toward the dunes.

Ah, Matt, he thought, then pushed the thought away. There was neither sense in, nor time for, dwelling on the boy now. It was too late. He and Peg had regained consciousness at the same time, had seen the open car door and realized within seconds that the boy was missing. It had taken them a while to dig themselves out, a while longer in a frantic search of the yard and house before Peg had stopped dead in her tracks, turned to him and said, "Gran." Nothing more was needed. The boy had gotten out, and had been caught.

Colin stumbled over nothing and Peg took his arm, smiled at him grimly and pulled at him until they'd caught up with the others. Garve and Hugh were carrying the cans of kerosene taken from the cruiser's trunk; Lee held the shotguns. They'd been at the car when he and Peg finally reached it, using the first-aid kit from the glove compartment to bind their minor injuries. Lee's ankle, however, had been twisted, and she favored it with an awkward limp.

"I think my head's gonna fall off," he said quietly, gingerly putting a finger to the bulky bandage hastily cross-taped to his forehead. "God."

The side of Peg's neck was swathed, and she kept plucking at her shirt as if she were trying to pull off the blood. "I'm going to light it myself," she said tonelessly. "I'm going to burn that fucking old man my own goddamed self."

He shivered, not entirely from the chilled air, and took the fuel can from Tabor's hand to relieve him. The chief nodded his thanks, took a weapon from Lee and walked with her in front. Hugh was silent. His glasses were broken, the lenses smeared and shattered, yet he wore them anyway and couldn't stop reaching up to push them back into place.

"They'll be waiting for us," Garve said as they neared the bend in the road. Several of the streetlights were out, but there was still enough light from one on the corner for them to see the first dune. Tidal water from the yards poured into the street, swept over their shoes, surged now and again midway up their shins. "I don't know. I think they'll be waiting."

Of course they'll be waiting, Colin thought in sudden anger. What the hell did he expect them to do? Keep right on strolling into the goddamn ocean? Of course they were waiting-because Gran willed it.

The wind coasted directly into his eyes and he kept his head averted to keep his vision clear. He saw shadows beyond the curbing, shadows behind him, but he was too numb, too enraged to pay them close heed. Out of a whole town already cut down to a handful by the storm, there were only five of them left; out of a whole town, five to kill the dead.

Lee thrust a warning arm out, and they stopped at the road's bend-the Estates on their left, the dunes straight ahead, and Gran's shack in the darkness, off to the right.

At the top of the first dune stood Alex Fox, his blue suit jacket flapping, part of his neck missing. Susan was beside him, her mouth grotesquely sagging.

Lee pumped a shell into the chamber at the same time Garve did, but no one moved.

"He's watching," Peg said, pushing her way to the front. "The son of a bitch is watching us."

Hugh took off his glasses and threw them away.

A window shattered explosively somewhere to their left.

Just before the last of the light had seeped from the sky they'd seen the clouds parting, disintegrating; there were no stars and there was no moon. Colin looked down at his empty hands and cursed. "Flashlights," he said in disgust. "We left the damned flashlight in the cars."

"No problem," Garve said without looking around. "Hugh and I'll get some from…" and he pointed toward the Estates.

"And leave us here alone?" Lee asked, astonished.

"Somebody's gotta watch them," the chief answered, using the shotgun for a pointer. "They're not going to stay there forever. Someone has to keep an eye out."

Alex swayed in the wind; Susan's skirt rolled and flared around her legs.

"Then go, for God's sake," Colin snapped, shoving at Tabor's shoulder. The two men broke into a run toward the nearest house, and Lee dropped back to stand beside Peg. Alex turned his head slightly; Susan stared whitely.

"Shoot them," Peg said flatly to Lee behind him. "Shoot the bastards."

"Peg," Colin said. "Peg."

"Shut up," she said. "Shut the hell up"

He saw her face then and didn't recognize her; the soft lines had creased, the eyes had turned to green stone, and despite the scratches and bruises that laced and splotched across her cheeks there was a colorless mask drawn from forehead to chin. Peg had lost herself when she'd lost her only child.

Lee was murmuring something calming to her then, but he couldn't hear it. The wind. The wind, and Alex Fox, and Matt out there somewhere walking around like a demonic puppet. And everything he'd worked for since he'd first come to Haven's End gone and done because of an old man's selfish hatred.

He began to breathe deeply.

Susan Fox stared at him.

The wind began to die.

At first he thought it was his imagination, that it was the blast of the night ocean against the flooded beach drowning out the storm. But when he looked up, looked around, he knew he was right. The storm was finally passing over.

He filled his lungs and held them full, held them full until he thought he would topple. Then he glared at the house where Garve and Hugh had vanished, glared toward the dark where Gran was waiting, and grabbed the shotgun from Lee's hands.

"Hey!"

He started for the curb, shrugging off her grasping hands, not bothering to look when he heard Peg say something sharply to her and heard a slap-hand against flesh, and Lee quietly moaning. He kept his gaze on Alex, stepped onto the sand and began a slow climb. The wind-blown spray had hardened the sand enough to prevent him from slipping, and when he was halfway up he stopped and raised the shotgun.

He could hear the sea water churning in the hollow between the two dunes.

Salt, he remembered saying, would keep these creatures on the island. The salt in the water.

Susan took a step down, Alex right beside her.

Peg called out a warning, and Tabor shouted angrily from a distance.

A flashlight beam took Susan in her face. Colin swallowed at the torn flesh, the gaping mouth, the blank dead eyes, and he pulled the trigger, then pumped in another round before the blast had lost its lightning. Susan toppled back, arms pinwheeling vainly until she fell over and he heard the muffled splash.

Alex moved more quickly, and Colin had to fire twice before the man was kicked into the water.

Tabor clamped his shoulder and spun him around. "What the hell good is that gonna do, goddamn it?"

Colin explained.

They climbed the rest of the way cautiously, waving the others behind. Sawgrass hummed. The wind died even more.

At the top, Garve directed the flash into the trough. Alex was floating face down and slowly turning; Susan's left hand poked out of the foam, dug into the sand.

"Son of a bitch," Garve whispered, grinning. "Son of a holy shit bitch!" And he turned and beckoned, his grin so wide Colin thought the chief would split his cheeks. But Colin felt the same-that finally they'd been able to do something, to win. So he grinned in return when Garve shook his hand enthusiastically, clapped his back, and stabbed the flashlight at the bodies for the others to see. Hugh nodded as he pulled at his drooping mustache, allowing himself a weak smile when Lee impulsively threw her arms around him.

Peg only stared.

"It's a start," Colin told her.

"Yes," she said, and made a sharp right turn.

The euphoria was brief, and the rest were soon on her heels, not stopping until the dune began to rise toward the flatland, the trees, and the shack hiding in the dark. Then Garve pushed his way to the front again, holding the flash in one hand, his gun in the other. Colin stayed beside him; Peg reluctantly followed.

They walked until the dunes were behind them and they were at the edge of Gran's clearing. The shack was thirty yards ahead, the beach fifty feet to their left hidden under foaming water. It was as if they had stepped onto an island.

Then Montgomery turned on his broad-beam flashlight and put a hand over his mouth.

They were there, over a dozen, ranged in a ragged line in front of the shack. All but El Nichols.

When the light struck their faces, their eyes glittered white.

"We'll never make it," Hugh said.

"Well, they can't run, for God's sake," Colin said heatedly. "And the spray, the… the salt spray, it must be slowing them down."

"There's too many," Hugh insisted, helplessly shaking his head. "There's too many. We'll be killed."

A few of them took a tentative step forward.

"Look," Colin said urgently, "there's no time to argue. They know we're here, and they can still follow us to some limited degree. Garve, you and Lee go to the left, over by the water there, and draw as many as you can toward you. Stick to the edge of the flat, and if you have to, jump in the water. They won't follow. Hugh, you and Peg go right. Same thing."

"And you?" Peg said. Her voice was cold.

"The first chance I get I'm going to get as close as I can and throw the cans against the shack. Someone, I don't give a damn who, shoot the hell out of them. The shack burns, Gran goes up in smoke, and…"He looked down, looked up. "And then we bury our friends."

Cart Naughton and Rose Adams began to walk.

"How do you know Gran's even in there?" Hugh said. "God, he could be anywhere!"

"My… Lord… how…" Colin could say nothing more. The goddamned fool had more questions than a seance, and he wished the idiot would either shut up or take off. But Hugh repeated the question, and he damned himself for not having an answer-because there was none. He didn't know. And realized he would have to be sure.

"No," Peg said, the cold gone for a moment, the mourning rage temporarily in abeyance. "No, I won't let you."

Frankie Adams picked up a rock, handed it to his father and picked up another.

"No time," he said. He gave the gun to Peg and hefted up the cans. "No time."

Thankfully, no one looked at him as though he were a hero. He didn't think he could stand that, not after having let Matthew down at the end. Besides, he was terrified. Standing here in the wind, listening to the surf dig itself a new coastline, watching animated corpses shuffling toward him, he was terrified; if someone didn't do something soon he knew he was going to run away. It was as simple as that-he was going to break and run.

"Lee," Garve said. He took her elbow and began moving. She shrugged him off, picked up a handful of stones and began heaving them toward Hattie Mills and Amy Fox. Immediately, several of them turned to follow. Peg pushed Hugh ahead of her, pushed again until his hands held rocks and he was following Lee's example.

Silently.

Not even the virtue of ragged, heavy breathing.

The rocks landed on the ground, landed on a chest, and there was no sound at all except the scream of the dying wind.

Colin eased along behind Hugh and Peg, watching, feeling the heavy cans pull at his throbbing shoulders, but not caring because it was going to work. A gap was opening, and as long as Peg and Hugh kept on drawing them to the right, it wouldn't be long before he could-

Lee shrieked, mournful, enraged, and he whirled to see her sprawled on the ground while Garve wrestled with Cart Naughton. He shouted, dropped the fuel cans and started to run, but Hugh put a foot into the back of one knee and drove him to the ground. Helplessly, then, sprawled not thirty feet from his friend, he watched as Garve lifted the dead boy off the sand, turned sharply and had the body dangling over his head. Lee shouted from her position on the ground, and Garve yelled as he tossed Cart into the sea.

Then, breathing heavily, he turned to help Lee, and Graham Otter fell onto Tabor's back and buckled him to the ground. He screamed as the minister's hands tore at his throat, screamed while he tried to kick himself over onto his back. Lee scrambled out of the way, shrieking, crying, picking up her fallen weapon and slamming the stock into Otter's forehead once, and once again, screaming obscenities when nothing happened, sobbing as she turned the weapon around to fire point blank into the dead man's skull.

Otter flew to one side, and Lee was on her knees, cradling Tabor's head in her lap.

Colin had no idea how much time had passed, certainly not more than a few seconds, before Garve opened his eyes with a slow fluttering. Even before Lee staggered back, shaking her head in denial, he knew what color they would be when Tabor looked up.

Peg took Colin's arm and pulled him to his feet.

Hugh flapped his arms in helpless rage. "Ah, Garve," he said again and again. "Ah, Garve, goddamn it."

Lee backed to the water's edge before she looked down at the shotgun still in one hand. Garve didn't move once he'd gotten to his feet. She braced the stock against her hip and aimed the barrel at his chest.

Colin despaired, looked around and saw Hattie Mills making for their position. With a vague gesture and a wordless moan, he picked up the cans again, to wait for his chance.

He refused to look over to see what Garve was doing.

And when a lane was finally opened, when Frankie broke into a quick shambling that made Hugh fire once, he ran.

Half crouching because of the weight he carried, he dodged an awkward swinging turn by Denise, veered clumsily around a pile of stones, and winced when someone else pulled a trigger, the flash like lightning that illuminated the shack's dingy wall. Another blast, and a fourth, and he was at the front door, his shoulder to it, and over the threshold before he could stop.

Garve. Shit, Garve, I'm sorry.

The stench surged and surrounded him.

He gagged and dropped the cans.

The stench-a fog of rotting flesh and defecation- brought him instantly to his knees. He opened his mouth to breathe while he forced his arms to stop their trembling. Then he saw the shimmering light oddly confined to the back room.

Jesus damn, Colin, Jesus damn.

Matthew, he thought, Matthew-God, I love you.

He lurched against the wall and staggered forward until he fell against the door frame.

Hello, Colin.

The headboard of Gran's bed was shoved against the rear wall, blocked on three sides by candles of varying sizes almost burned down to the floor. At least a hundred, he estimated-white, red, black here and there, all of them glowing an unearthly shade of orange that made him think suddenly of a pumpkin glowing at Halloween. Near his feet on the floor were the littered bodies of at least two dozen gulls and squirrels, and the head of the Doberman with its fangs exposed and its eyes winking green.

None of the light reached the ceiling; all of it was directed at the bed, and Gran D'Grou-he sat with his back to the wall, his legs crossed, his hands folded in his lap. He was naked.

Colin, you be in a hurry to die?

He thought he heard footsteps behind him, heard a shotgun explode in the dark.

Gran was facing him, and Colin had no doubt at all that the old man was dead. His body was shriveled, and there was sand and seaweed clinging to his skin. His mouth was closed.

Jesus, Colin, you are stupid tonight. And his eyes were wide open. Look around, Colin, and see what my Lilla give me tonight.

He heard the steps clearly now, and despite a silent command he looked over his shoulder.

A small boy in the doorway, with a huge rock in his hand.

The shotgun.

Peg shouting, Lee screaming. The boy. My favorite.

Colin felt it all leave-the hope, the rage, the compulsion to fight back. It slipped out of him and stained the floor; it burned his stomach and loosened his bowels; it made his fingers stiff, and he dropped the can at his feet.

The boy raised his arm.

I think, Colin, he wants you to stay here with me. I told you I had tricks. You never listen. Too bad.

"Matthew?" Colin whispered, unable to move. "Matt?"

The rock struck his shoulder and spun him around, spiraled him to the floor.

The boy lifted his other arm.

"Pal," Colin said.

Jesus damn, Colin. Jesus damn.

Peg called his name, and the wind fluttered the candles.

The boy aimed.

Colin blinked and the can came into focus.

And the rage returned; the artist, the teacher, the would-be father, the lover, gone. He grabbed the can and fumbled off the cap, whirled around and held it over his head.

Colin!

The rock struck him sharply between the shoulders, he grunted, and tossed the can as he pitched forward. It arched over the bed and landed against the wall above Gran's head. It bounced into the dead man's lap, the kerosene spilled onto the nearest candle and flared. Before Colin was able to get back to his knees, the bed and the body and the room were a torch.

He screamed as the flames caught at his jeans; he whirled and ran, grabbing the boy by one arm and dragging him out of the shack as the walls caught, the roof caught, and there was light on the water rippling and rising; he ran, burning, screaming, toward the pines until he looked down at his burden and saw Tommy Fox.

He shoved the boy away, pushed Hugh aside when the doctor tried to stop him, and fell-stumbled-dove into the tide.

The second can exploded, and he saw Pegeen weeping.

There were hands on his arms, dragging him out of the water, pulling off his pants. Hugh nodded when Peg asked if he would be all right. Lee stood over him, and when he grinned they hauled him to his feet so he could give Peg a hug, a quick kiss, and hold her hand. There was no celebration. The joy he felt was dashed when he saw Garve lying with his head in the shadows. When they finally began to stagger from the burning shack, the sprawled bodies of the rest of their friends lay on the sand, mangled, torn, faces up to the night sky, their eyes finally closed.

He had little sense of time left. They were on the flat, on the dune, then on the street and heading back for the cruiser. Someone, he thought it might be Hugh, was talking about salvaging one of the boats at the marina and using it to get back to the mainland. The sea was too high, Lee (he thought) argued, and Montgomery hushed her with an uncharacteristic curse.

Garve found a boat, he thought, but couldn't say it. Garve found a boat.

He was tired. He knew he shouldn't be leaning on Peg so heavily, but he was so God-almighty tired that if anything that looked like a bed came within a mile of him he was going to use it and sleep without dreams for the rest of his life.

The fire cast their shadows.

At the patrol car Peg balked at getting in.

Colin knew what she was thinking.

When none of the others moved to help, he took Hugh's long flashlight and walked with her around the deadfall, turning the beam on the path their car had taken into the yard. They spent an hour searching through the rubble, through the rooms, this time opening closets and poking under tables. They spent an hour, and they found nothing. And when they came outside again, Peg had lost the armor she'd forged from her revenge.

At the sidewalk she stopped.

"I… we can't go until we find him," she said.

"In the morning," he said. "We'll never find him tonight."

"I won't go."

"You don't have to."

"Hugh said-"

"Hugh says a lot of things. And if he insists, well, there's more than one boat, you know." He put an arm around her waist, held her close. "We'll find him. I promise."

She seemed ready to agree, then shook herself and stared at him. "No. You go if you want. I can't. I just can't."

He touched a hand to her shoulder, nodded it's all right, and they walked toward the edge of the woods, toward the path to the cliffs. The trees still whipsawed in the dying storm, the flashlight's beam was coated with spray that had it glittering, fogging, picking out things moving where nothing moved at all.

They stopped at the edge of the path, and he licked at his lips. The way ahead was dark, filled with the growl of the sea climbing the rocks. Peg took his arm; they left the road behind.

"Peg," he whispered, wanting to tell her how fruitless this was. But she tightened her grip to silence him, and he stared ahead, trying to see beyond the reach of the light, swinging it side to side, hunting for a telltale break in the undergrowth.

Five minutes and he was freezing.

Five more and she stumbled, nearly knocking them both down.

He sensed her resolve weakening, yet she pulled him on gently until they reached a widening of the path and saw the body ahead.

"Oh my God," she murmured.

The flashlight poked closer, and the body elongated.

"It's El," he said flatly.

Peg looked away, a cheek against his shoulder, and he had a hand out when he felt her stiffen and clutch him fiercely. He turned quickly, and saw the figure in the middle of the road, the shadow waiting for them in the middle of the path.

It was then he realized he hadn't brought a weapon.

Like a man with a torch fending off a jungle beast, he thrust the flashlight ahead of him, jabbing at the figure as it staggered toward them. Peg whimpered, was ready to bolt and run, when suddenly the light caught the figure's face.

"Matthew!" Peg screamed, and ran to take him in her arms.

His hair was matted in cords over his face, his clothes torn and drenched, but as far as Colin could tell, the boy wasn't injured.

A brief pain in his chest then when Peg cradled and lifted Matt, rocking him while she held him and tried to clean him off at the same time; another draining when he realized.that finally it was over. He waited until the boy noticed him as well, and in a three-way joyous spate of talking, yelling, laughing, explaining, he heard something that made him hush them all with a sharp wave.

"What?" he said, taking the boy by the shoulder.

"I said," Matt told him as if he should have known, "I went to find Lilla and make her give you and Mom back. And she did! She really and truly did!"

"Lilla," Peg said dully.

Matt's eyes widened in excitement, in relief. "Yes, honest, Mom! She was in the cave. I went there and she was there. I was real scared at first because she was acting all funny, but then I told her what I wanted and she said okay, and then… then…" The boy's face darkened, and suddenly he was crying.

Peg carried him back to the car, Colin trailing and swinging the flashlight. As he watched them climb into the back seat, heard Peg's joyous laughter and Hugh's brisk professional manner, he shook his head and walked around to stand next to Lee.

"Lilla," he said.

"Should we look for her?"

"I'm tempted," he answered.

"Colin, no. I'll tell you the truth-I don't know what the hell it was we've just been through, and I don't think I want to know. Ever. Lilla, as far as I'm concerned, can rot alone in this hell."

He hated himself, but he nodded. "I only said I was tempted. I have no intention of finding her. I don't care what Matt says. She could have killed him out there, no matter what she was like after Gran was… taken care of."

"Good," she said. "Good."

He took the driver's seat, Lee beside him and holding his arm tightly. A false start and the engine caught, and he drove as fast as he could back toward the village.

As they passed the gas station, Hugh leaned over the back. "It's done, right?" ' "Damn right," Lee said. "You're sure?"

"Hugh," Colin said, "why don't you shut up?"

"I was referring to Lilla," Montgomery said before slipping back to his seat.

"Yes," he said, and turned to look out the window. "I know."

They passed Naughton's Market, the theater, the bank, the luncheonette.

"Hope you can run a boat," Lee said with a forced laugh as they drove toward the marina.

"I can," Matt volunteered. And when Peg hushed him with a mock scowl and Colin began to laugh, he crossed his arms over his chest and pushed himself into the corner. "Well, I can," he insisted grumpily. "Gee. Nuts. Goddamn."