Darkness. Part 30

As his fingers brushed against her skin, her eyes snapped open. "Grandpa?" she gazed up at him in the dim light and felt a chill of fear. In the dim moonlight he looked different-his eyes sunken, his face older. "I-I was asleep," she said quickly, shrinking away from his touch and doing her best to conceal the fright that had seized her.

Carl straightened up. "I thought I heard a door," he explained. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

Kelly forced a smile. "It's okay. I was just dreaming." She rolled over as if going back to sleep, and a moment later heard her grandfather leaving the room.

But even after he was gone, the memory of his eyes-the eyes of the man in her dreams-remained etched in her memory.

On the way back to his room Carl paused in the bathroom to relieve his bladder. But as he was about to switch off the light, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

His eyes had sunk into their sockets, and deep wrinkles were etched in his skin.

He gazed at his fingers and saw the beginnings of the telltale liver spots.

He thought quickly. How long had it been since his last shot?

Only a few days!

Then what was wrong?

He hurried back to his room, closed the door, picked up the phone and dialed Warren Phillips's home number. On the seventh ring Phillips's answering machine came on, inviting him to leave a message at the tone.

Carl swore softly, but then began speaking. "It's Carl Anderson. I need another shot right away. Call me as soon as you get in." He thought a moment, then spoke again. "No, don't call me. It'll wake up everyone else in the house, and I can't let anyone see me until I've had my shot. I'll be there in the morning, before it gets light."

He hung up the phone and sank down onto the bed.

He looked at the clock.

One-thirty.

Four and a half hours before he could get to Phillips.

He picked up the phone again, redialing the same number. "I don't think I can wait," he said into the doctor's answering machine. "I'll call every half hour until I get hold of you."

He lay back on the bed, knowing he wouldn't sleep for the rest of the night.

23.

The first faint glimmers of dawn were breaking when Carl Anderson, his hands trembling, reached for the phone one more time. He'd fallen asleep several times during the night, but his sleep had been troubled, for the degeneration taking place within his body kept waking him up.

His joints were stiffening with arthritis, and his lungs felt clogged, his breath coming in deep raling gasps. As he groped for the phone, his trembling fingers failed him and the receiver clattered to the floor. He tried to reach down and pick it up, but flashes of pain in his spine made him lie back on the pillow for a moment, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He waited for the pain to pa.s.s, then reached for the cord of the dangling receiver, finally grasping it and pulling it up. At last he was able to pull the phone, too, onto the bed, and laboriously punch in Warren Phillips's number. Once more the impersonal machine answered.

"I can't wait any longer," Carl gasped. "I'm coming over."

Groaning with the effort, he raised himself into a sitting position and dropped his legs over the edge of the bed, his knees protesting painfully as he forced them to flex. At last he pushed himself up. A wave of dizziness washed over him, forcing him to reach out and steady himself against the night table. He could feel his heart beating raggedly in his chest; the simple effort of getting out of bed had all but exhausted him.

He tried to breathe deeply, but each breath shot needles of pain through him. He fought against the pain, forcing himself to walk slowly to the bathroom, where, his terror mounting, he stared at the unrecognizable image in the mirror.

An old man, far older than Carl Anderson truly was. It was as if all the years kept at bay by the shots Phillips had been giving him over the last decade and a half were now crashing back on him, overwhelming him.

His skin, leathery and slack, hung loosely around his jowls, and his beard, stubbly after the long night, was shot through with gray. The hair on his head was wispy, his scalp showing through everywhere; and his bloodshot eyes, shadowed by dark circles, squinted from their deep sockets, resisting the bright lights around the mirror.

His right hand came up, reaching out, as if by touching the vile image he could erase it.

His nails were cracked, and scabs had formed around his torn cuticles. The liver spots, barely visible only a few hours ago, now blotched his hands with the unhealthy color of old age, and his fingers were gnarled and twisted, distorted by the ravages of the decay that was consuming him.

An unintelligible croak of fear rising in his throat, Carl turned away, lurching back to his bedroom, where he pulled on the same clothes he'd worn the day before.

They bagged on his shriveling frame, the pants threatening to slide off his bony hips, the shirt hanging in deep folds from his drooping shoulders.

His eyes drifted to the pillow, all but obscured by the hair that had fallen away from his scalp during the night.

He was dying-he could feel it in the weakness that was inexorably spreading through his body.

He picked up his keys from the dresser by the door, then abandoned his bedroom, stumbling through the living room toward the kitchen and the garage beyond. As he climbed into the cab of the pickup truck, groping for the remote control that would open the garage door, he was no longer certain whether the weakness he was feeling came from the degeneration of his body or the fear of death that was overwhelming his mind.

Phillips.

He had to get to Phillips before it was too late.

The garage door behind him ground slowly upward, seeming to take forever before he could finally back the truck out into the street, but at last he was on his way. He shifted the truck into forward, moving quickly off into the brightening light of the summer morning.

Kelly stood frozen at the window long after her grandfather's pickup had disappeared around the corner.

She'd stayed awake all night, watching the telephone, waiting for the red light to blink on in the darkness, signaling that her grandfather was once more calling Dr. Phillips. Each time the telltale light had come on, she'd picked up the phone, pressing it to her ear as she heard her grandfather leaving another message.

With each call his voice had sounded weaker, until finally, on the last call only a few minutes ago, she'd barely been able to distinguish his words at all.

She was certain he was sick, and getting sicker as the night went on. For a brief moment, three hours ago, she'd wondered if she shouldn't go to him and find out what was wrong. But even before she'd left her room, she'd remembered that distinct feeling she'd had earlier that he was part of the dreadful evil that was being carried out deep in the swamp.

At last, when she'd heard him coming out of his room, she'd gone to her own door, opening it just far enough to press her eye against the crack and peer down the stairs into the foyer.

She'd gasped when she'd seen him moving through the shadows toward the kitchen, his tall figure stooped as he shuffled across the flagstone floor, his pace slow and careful, as if he was afraid of losing his balance.

Then, as he'd backed down the driveway, she'd gotten a clear look at his face, and it was that vision that had made her blood run cold.

This morning it truly was the face from her dreams; the face she'd glimpsed in the mirror sometimes, leering over her shoulder.

The hands she'd seen clenching the steering wheel of the truck were the same hands that she'd shrunk away from in her dreams, the clawlike hands that reached for her, as if intent on choking the life out of her.

But it wasn't her life those hands had been reaching for at all.

It was her youth.

That hideous being wanted the resilience of her flesh, the suppleness of her muscles and strength of her bones, the freshness of her skin, the brightness of her eyes and lushness of her hair.

Did he, and the others like him, even know what else they had stolen from her?

A cold knot of hatred filled her heart, and she knew now the feeling that Michael had known just after midnight, when he was sure his sister had been taken from her crypt.

They would find a way to take back what had been stolen from them, find a way to end the evil.

At last she turned away from the window and returned to her bed, the exhaustion of the long night finally overcoming her.

She drifted into sleep, and once more the nightmares came, but when the ancient visage appeared out of the darkness this time, it was no longer the face of a stranger.

It was the face of her grandfather.

The sun was creeping over the horizon as Carl Anderson arrived at Warren Phillips's house, and as its first brilliant rays struck his rheumy eyes, Carl blinked, cringing away from the light as a creature of the night slinks to its den at daybreak.

He felt exposed, and imagined there were eyes everywhere, watching him, uncovering the secret he'd protected for so many years, recognizing him for the skulking thief he knew he was.

He pulled the truck around to the back of Phillips's house, abandoning it with the key still in the ignition as he staggered to the back door, pressing the doorbell with a shaking finger.

He heard the soft chime of the bell within, echoing oddly, as if to signal him that the house was still empty.

Defeated, he sagged down onto the back steps, coughing roughly to clear his throat of the thick mucus that was coagulating there, his breath rasping as he struggled to keep his lungs filled with air.

Hearing a car, he shrank back until he recognized Warren Phillips's Buick gliding down the driveway, then hope surged within him.

Phillips, seeing him, braked the car to an abrupt halt. Then he was at the foot of the steps, helping Carl up, supporting him with one arm as he opened the back door.

"I've been calling all night," Carl rasped as Phillips helped him through the house to the library. "Where the h.e.l.l-"

"I've been at the hospital," Phillips snapped. "Just take it easy."

"A shot," Carl pleaded. "I'm dying..."

Phillips disappeared for a moment, returning with a hypodermic syringe. Carl's eyes fixed greedily on the needle as he struggled to roll up his sleeve. But then a doubt came into his mind.

"It's not full. Why isn't it a full dose?"

Phillips swabbed Carl's arm with alcohol, and inserted the needle. "You're lucky I even have this," he said, pressing the plunger. "If it weren't for Jenny Sheffield..."

Carl felt the restorative fluid spread through him, reveled in the miraculous warmth that seemed to wash the pain from his body. Already, only a few seconds after the shot, his pulse was smoothing out, the irregular spasms of his heart returning once more to the strong steady beats that would keep his blood surging through his body.

The panic that had consumed him only a moment ago began to recede, and the words Phillips had just spoken slowly sank in. "Jenny Sheffield?" he repeated. "But she's-"

"Don't be stupid, Carl. She's not dead. She's in my lab. And if you're lucky, she'll keep you alive until you can find someone else."

Carl Anderson felt the panic creeping back up. "I can't do that," he muttered. "I pay. I pay a lot-"

"It doesn't matter how much you pay if I don't have anything to sell," Phillips told him. His eyes fixed darkly on the old man. "And if I were you, I'd stay out of sight for a while, Carl. You look terrible."

There was a cruel note in the doctor's voice that chilled Carl's soul. "But you said-"

Warren Phillips cut him off before he could finish. "If you want to live, you know what you have to do."

Ted Anderson came into the kitchen, stopping short when he found no one there except his wife. "Where's Dad?" he asked.

Mary shrugged. "He must have gotten up early. He wasn't here when I came down, and the truck's gone."

Frowning, Ted went to the door leading to the garage. Save for his own worn Chrysler, the garage was empty. Puzzled, he moved to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the back burner. "Where the h.e.l.l would he go this early?"

Mary glanced archly at her husband. "I'm afraid he didn't leave a note. Would you call Kelly?"

Ted went to the bottom of the stairs leading to Kelly's room, calling out, then went up and knocked on the door. "Kelly? Time to get up." There was a silence, then he heard his daughter's voice.

"I'll be down in a second."

Returning to the kitchen, he sat down at the table just as Mary slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. A minute later, wrapped in a robe, Kelly appeared. Ted glanced up at her, then looked more closely. Kelly's face was pale and her eyes were edged with dark circles, as if she hadn't slept at all. "Honey? Are you okay?"

For a moment he wasn't sure Kelly had even heard him. She was staring off into s.p.a.ce, lost in some world of her own. Then her expression changed, as if a veil had dropped over her eyes.

"I guess I didn't sleep very well last night," she said, her voice flat.

Mary, hearing the strange vacant note in her daughter's voice, looked worriedly at her. "Do you feel all right?"

Kelly said nothing. What would they say if she told them what had happened last night and what she'd seen this morning? What would they think if she told them that her grandfather had stolen her soul from her?

They'd think she was crazy.

And yet she wasn't crazy. She knew what had happened in the swamp, knew what Clarey Lambert had told her.

This morning, at dawn, she'd seen her grandfather, and finally understood the terrifying vision that had tormented her for as long as she could remember.

And knew that it wasn't a vision from her imagination at all.

It was a vision of the truth.

A truth she couldn't speak of to anyone except Michael Sheffield, because no one else would believe her.

"I-I'm fine," she murmured at last.

But she wasn't fine at all.

In the bright light of a perfect summer morning, when she should have been feeling good about everything, she felt only a dark terror.

A terror she realized might never leave her.

Ted pulled the Chrysler through the gates of Villejeune Links Estates and was relieved to see his father's pickup truck parked in front of the trailer that served as a construction office. Ted was early himself this morning, and except for his father's truck, the site was still empty. He pulled the Chrysler alongside the truck, shut off the engine, and went into the trailer.