Running with the Demon Part 14

Finally he seized the front of Junior's shirt and dragged him halfway across the table, spilling beer and sending ashtrays and napkins flying. "You listen to me, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" he screamed. "You listen to me when I talk to you!"

A few people turned to see what was happening, but when they saw the look on Deny Howe's face, they quickly went back to their own conversations. The music boomed out, the dancers yelled and clapped, and the confrontation in the tiny corner booth went mostly unnoticed.

"Okay, okay, I'm listening!" Junior snapped, jerking free. He was twenty pounds heavier and two inches taller, but there was fear in his eyes as he spoke the words. d.a.m.n well ought to be, Derry Howe thought with satisfaction.

"You heard anything I said so far, porkypine?" he sneered. "Anything at all?"

Junior ran his hand over his head, feeling the soft bristles of hair that were the product of this afternoon's visit to the Clip Joint, where he'd impulsively decided on a brush cut. He'd thought it would make him look tougher, he'd told Derry afterward. He'd thought it would make him look like a lean, mean cat. What it did was make him look like a jerk. Derry had begun ragging on him right away, calling him names. Porky-pine. Cactus head. n.a.z.i brain. Like that.

"I heard every d.a.m.n thing you said!" Junior snapped furiously, sick and tired of Derry's att.i.tude. "You want me to repeat it, smarta.s.s? Want to hear me stand up and shout it out loud maybe?"

If Derry Howe had been angry before, he was positively livid now. His expression changed, his eyes went flat and cold, and all the color drained out of his face. He looked at Junior as if a line had been crossed and Junior were no longer among the living.

Junior's mouth worked against the sudden dryness in his throat. "Look, I just meant..."

"Shut up," Derry Howe said softly. Even in the din, Junior heard the words plainly. "You just shut your mouth and listen. I ever hear you say something like that again, and you're history, bub. You believe me? Do you?"

Junior nodded, sitting there as still as stone, staring into the eyes of the man across from him, the man who had been his best friend until just a moment ago and who now was someone else entirely.

"This is too important for me to let you screw it up, you understand?" Derry Howe's voice was a soft hiss. "There's too much at stake for you to be making stupid statements or wisea.s.s remarks. You with me on this or not? Answer me, d.a.m.n it!"

Junior nodded. He'd never seen Derry like this. "Yeah, sure, course I am."

Derry Howe gave him a long, hard look. "All right, then. Here's the rest of it. Don't say nothing till I'm finished. Just listen. This is for keeps, Junior. We can't go p.u.s.s.yfooting about and hope the company will just come to their senses all on their own. My uncle and those other old farts might think that'll work, but they're whistling down a rat hole. They're old and they're worn-out and the company knows it. The company ain't about to negotiate. Never was. There's just you and me, bub. It's up to us. We have to bring them to the table, kicking and screaming if that's what it takes, but with them understanding they got to reopen the mill. Right? Okay. So we've got to have some leverage."

He leaned so close to Junior that his friend could smell the beer on his breath. "When this thing happens, it's got to be big enough that it will bring the national in. It ain't enough if it looks like an accident. It ain't enough, even if it looks like it's the company's fault. That won't do it. There's got to be casualties. Someone's got to be hurt, maybe even killed."

Junior stared openmouthed, then quickly shook his head. "Man, this is crazy..."

"Crazy because it gets the job done?" Derry snapped. "Crazy because it just might work? h.e.l.l, because it will will work? Every war has its sacrifices, Junior. And this is a war, don't kid yourself. It's a war we're going to win. But that won't happen if the company isn't held accountable for something they can't talk their way out of. It won't happen if it don't draw the national's attention." work? Every war has its sacrifices, Junior. And this is a war, don't kid yourself. It's a war we're going to win. But that won't happen if the company isn't held accountable for something they can't talk their way out of. It won't happen if it don't draw the national's attention."

"But you can't just... You can't..."

"Go on, say it, Junior," Derry hissed derisively.

"Kill someone, d.a.m.n it!"

"No? Why not? Why the h.e.l.l not?"

He could, of course. He'd already decided it, in fact. He would do it because it was necessary. He would do it because it was a war, just like he'd said, and in a war, people got killed. He'd talked it over with himself the day before, after he'd come up with the accident idea. It was almost like having someone sitting there with him, having a conversation with a trusted friend, talking it through, reasoning it out. It all made perfect sense. He was certain of it. He was positive.

Junior kept shaking his head. "d.a.m.n it, Derry, you're talking about murder!"

"No, I ain't. Don't use that word. It ain't murder if it's a war. This is just - what do you call it? - a sacrifice for the greater good. For the community, for you and me and all the rest. You can see that, can't you?"

Junior nodded doubtfully, still trying to come to terms with the idea. "All right, okay, it's a war. So that's different. And it's gonna be an accident, right? Just part of something else that happens?" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked carefully at Derry once more. "But it's not gonna be deliberate, is it?"

Derry Howe's expression did not change. Junior was such a dork. He forced himself to smile. "Course not. It's gonna be an accident. When there's an accident, people get hurt. It will be a real tragedy when it happens. It will make everyone feel bad, but particularly the company, because it will be the company's fault."

He reached out, fastened his hand around the back of Junior's neck, and pulled his friend's tensed face right up against his own. "Just you remember that, Junior," he whispered. "It won't be our fault. It will be the company's fault. High-and-mighty MidCon's fault." He squeezed Junior's neck roughly. "They'll crawl over broken gla.s.s to get back to the bargaining table then. They'll beg to get back. Hide and watch, Junior. Hide and watch."

Junior Elway reached for what was left of his beer.

Nest stayed in the swing another few minutes, lost in her thoughts of John Ross, then climbed out and stood looking off into the blackness of the park. She wondered if the demon he hunted was hiding there. She wondered if it preferred the dark, twisting caves where the feeders concealed themselves to the lighted houses of the humans it preyed upon. Miss Minx crept by, stalking something Nest could not see. She watched the cat move soundlessly through the dark, silken and deadly in its pursuit, and she had a sudden sense of what it would be like to be hunted like that.

She moved toward the house, thinking to go in, knowing she would have only an hour or two of sleep before it was time to meet Two Bears at the Sinnissippi burial mounds. She wondered what Two Bears knew about all this. Did he know of the demon and John Ross and of the war they fought? Did he know of the Word and the Void? Was he aware of the existence of this other world, of its proximity to the human world, and of the ties that bound the two? She felt certain he knew a great deal he wasn't telling her, much like John Ross. She wondered if they shared a common purpose in coming to Hopewell, perhaps a purpose no one else recognized, one tied to both the spirits of the Sinnissippi and the coming of the demon. She sighed and shook her head. It was all speculation, but speculation was all she had.

She moved up to the screen door, then slowed when she heard voices coming from the kitchen. Her grandparents were arguing. She hesitated, then moved down the side of the house to the window that opened above the sink to eavesdrop. It wasn't something she normally did, but she'd heard John Ross's name, and she was curious to know if he was the cause of the argument. She stood silent and unmoving in the shadows, listening.

"He seems like a fine young man to me," her grandfather was saying. He was leaning against the counter at the sink, his back to the window. Nest could see his shadow in a pool of light thrown on the ground. "He was pleasant and straightforward when he came up to speak to me at Josie's. He didn't ask for a thing. It was my idea to invite him to dinner."

"You're too trusting, Robert," her grandmother replied. "You always have been."

"He's given us no reason to be anything else."

"Don't you think it's a bit odd, him showing up like this, unannounced, uninvited, just to see us, to talk about a girl he hasn't seen in over fifteen, sixteen years? A girl who's been dead all that time and never a word from him? Do you remember Caitlin ever saying anything about him, ever even mentioning his name?"

Old Bob sipped from his coffee cup, thinking. "No, but that doesn't mean she didn't know him."

"It doesn't mean he was a friend, either." Nest could picture Gran sitting at the kitchen table, bourbon and water in hand, smoking her cigarette. "I didn't like the way he took to Nest."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Evelyn."

"Don't invoke G.o.d for my sake, Robert!" Gran shot back. "Use the brain he gave you instead! Suppose, for a minute, John Ross is not who he claims. Suppose he's someone else altogether."

"Someone else? Who?"

"Him, that's who."

There was the sound of ice cubes tinkling in an empty gla.s.s and of a fresh cigarette being lit, then silence. Nest watched her grandfather place his coffee cup on the counter, saw his leonine head lower, heard him sigh.

"He's gone, Evelyn. He's not coming back. Ever."

Her grandmother pushed back her chair and rose. Nest could hear her move to the counter and pour herself a drink. "Oh, he's coming, all right, Robert. He's coming. I've known it from the first, from the moment Caitlin died and he disappeared. I've always known it."

"Why would he do that?" Old Bob's voice sounded uneasy. "Evelyn, you can't be serious."

Nest stood transfixed in the heat and the dark, unable to turn away. They were talking about her father.

"He wants Nest," Gran said quietly. She drew on the cigarette and took a long swallow of the drink. Nest heard each sound clearly in the pause between her grandmother's words. "He's always wanted her."

"Nest? Why would he want Nest? Especially after all this time?"

"Because she's his, Robert. Because she belongs to him, and he doesn't give anything up this side of the grave. Don't you know that by now? After Caitlin, don't you know that?"

There was another pause; and then some sounds that Nest could not identify, muttered words perhaps, grumbling. Her grandfather straightened at the window.

"It's been fifteen years, but I remember him well enough." Old Bob spoke softly, but distinctly. "John Ross doesn't look anything like him, Evelyn. They're not the same man."

Gran gave a quick, harsh laugh. "Really, Robert. Sometimes you appall me. Doesn't look like him? You think for a minute that man couldn't change his looks if there was reason enough to do so? You think he couldn't look like anyone he wanted to? Don't you realize what he is?"

"Evelyn, don't start."

"Sometimes you're a fool, Robert," Gran declared sharply. "If you want to go on pretending that I'm a crazy old woman who imagines things that aren't there, that's fine. If you want to pretend there's no feeders in the park, that's fine, too. But there's some things you can't wish away, and he's one of them. You saw what he was. You saw what he did to Caitlin. I wouldn't put anything past him. He's coming here, coming for Nest, and when he does he won't be stupid enough to look the same as he did when he left. You do what you want, Robert, but I plan to be ready for him."

The kitchen was silent again. Nest waited, straining to hear.

"I notice you didn't worry about letting him take her into the park," Old Bob said finally.

Gran didn't say anything. Nest could hear the sound of her gla.s.s being raised and lowered.

"So maybe there's not as much to be afraid of as you'd like me to believe. Maybe you're not sure who John Ross is either."

"Maybe," Gran said softly.

"I invited him to come to church tomorrow morning," Old Bob went on deliberately. "I asked him to sit with us. Will you be coming?"

There was a pause. "I don't expect so," Gran replied.

Nest took a long, slow breath. Her grandfather moved away from the window. "I invited him to picnic with us in the park afterward, too. So we could talk some more." Her grandfather cleared his throat. "I like him, Evelyn. I think Nest likes him. I don't think there's any reason to be scared of him."

"You will pardon me if I reserve my opinion on that?" Gran replied after a moment. "That way, we won't all be caught by surprise." She laughed softly. "Spare me that look. And don't ask me if I plan to have another drink either, because I do. You go on to bed, Robert. I'll be just fine by myself. Have been for a long time. Go on."

Nest heard her grandfather move away wordlessly. She stayed where she was for a moment longer, staring up at the empty, lighted kitchen window, listening to the silence. Then she slipped back through the shadows like the ghost of the child she had grown out of being.

Chapter Sixteen.

Nest did not sleep when she finally reached her bedroom, but lay awake in the dark staring up at the ceiling and listening to the raucous hum of the locusts through the screen window. The air felt thick and damp with the July heat, and even the whirling blades of the big floor fan did little to give relief. She lay atop her covers in her running shorts and T-shirt, waiting for midnight and her rendezvous with Two Bears. The bedroom door stood open; the hallway beyond was silent and dark. Gran might have gone to bed, but Nest could not be certain. She imagined her grandmother sitting alone at the kitchen table in the soft, tree-filtered light of moon and stars, smoking her cigarettes, drinking her bourbon, and reflecting on the secrets she hid.

Nest watched those secrets dance as shadows on her ceiling.

Was John Ross her father? If he was, why had he abandoned her?

The questions repeated themselves over and over in her mind, suspended in time and wrapped in chilly, imperious solitude. They whispered to her, haunting and insidious.

If John Ross was her father, why was Gran so bitter toward him? Why was she so mistrustful of his motives? What was it that her father had done?

She closed her eyes, as if the answers might better be found in darkness. She stilled herself against the beating of her heart, against the pulse of her blood as it raced through her veins, but she could find no peace.

Why was her father such an enigmatic figure, a shadow barely recognizable as being a part of her life? Why did she know so little about him?

Outside an owl hooted softly, and Nest wondered if Daniel was calling to her. He did that sometimes, reaching out to her from the dark, a gesture she did not fully understand. But she did not rise to look this night, locked in her struggle to understand the doubts and confusion that beset her at every turn. Like a Midwest thunderstorm building out on the plains and working its way east, dark and forbidding and filled with power, a revelation approached. She could feel it, could taste it like rain and smell it like electricity in the air. The increasing boldness of the feeders, the deterioration of the maentwrog's prison, and the coming of John Ross and the demon signaled a shift in the balance of things. In a way Nest did not yet understand, it was all tied to her. She could sense that much from the time she had spent with John Ross. It was in the words he had used and the secrets he had shared. He had taken her into his confidence because she was directly involved. The challenge she faced now, on thinking it through, was in persuading him to tell her why.

When it was nearing midnight, the time reflected by the luminous green numbers on her digital clock, she rose and walked to her open bedroom door and stood listening. The house was dark save for the single lamp that Gran always left burning in the front entry. Nest moved back across the room to turn down the bed and place the extra pillows under the sheet to make it look like she was sleeping. Then she removed the window screen from its fastenings and slipped through, put the screen back in place, and turned toward the park.

In the distance a dog barked, the sound piercing and clear in the deep night silence, and Nest was reminded suddenly of Riley. Riley was the last dog they had owned. A black lab with big feet, sad eyes, and a gentle disposition, he came to her as a puppy, given to her by her grandfather on her third birthday. She had loved Riley from the moment he had bounded into her arms, all rough pads and wet tongue, big ears and squirming body. She had named him Riley because she thought he just looked like a Riley, even though she had never actually known one. Riley had been her dog all through growing up, there for her when she left for school, waiting for her when she came home, with her when she went down the road to visit her friends, at her side when she slipped into the park. He was there when she saw the feeders, Pick, and even Wraith, although he did not seem to see any of them as she did. She was almost twelve when he developed a tumor in his lungs. Inoperable, she was told. She went with her grandfather to have her faithful friend and companion put down. She stood watching, dry-eyed and stoic, as the vet injected Riley and his sleek body stiffened and his soft eyes fixed. She did not cry until later, but then she did not think she would ever stop.

What she remembered most, however, was Gran's reaction. Gran had stayed behind and cried alone; Nest could tell she had cried from her red eyes and the wrinkled Kleenex wads in the waste basket next to the kitchen table where she had begun to take up permanent residence with her bourbon and her cigarettes. Gran said nothing on their return, but at dinner that night she announced in a tone of voice that brooked no argument that they had acquired their last dog. Cats were sufficient. Cats could look after themselves. Dogs were too dependent, required too much, and stole away your heart. Ostensibly, she was speaking of Riley, but Nest had been pretty certain that in an odd way she was speaking of Caitlin as well.

She stood now for a moment hi the darkness of the summer night, remembering. She missed Riley more than she could say. She had never told Gran this. She knew it was something Gran did not want to hear, that it would only suggest to her how much she, in turn, missed Caitlin.

Nest glanced at the silent house, thinking Gran might appear, that she might somehow know what Nest was about. But there was no movement and no sound from within. Nest turned away once more and crept through the shadows of the backyard, eyes searching. Miss Minx slunk from beneath a big oak, low to the ground and furtive. Another cat, a strange striped one, followed. Out in the park, beyond the wall of the hedge, moonlight bathed the open ball fields and play areas with silver brightness. It was her secret world, Nest thought, smiling at the idea. Her secret world, belonging only to her. No one knew it as she did, not even Gran, for whom it was now distant and foreign. Nest wondered if it would become that way for her someday, if by growing she would lose her child's world as she would lose her childhood, that this was the price you paid for becoming an adult. There was that gap between adults and children that reserved to each secrets that were hidden from the other. When you were old enough, you became privy to the secrets that belonged only to adults and lost in turn those that belonged only to children. You did not ever gain all of one or lose all of the other; of each, some you kept and some you never gained. That was the way it worked. Gran had told her that almost a year ago, when Nest had felt her child's body first begin its slow change to a woman's. Gran had told her that life never gave you everything or took everything away.

She slipped through the gap in the hedgerow, and Pick dropped onto her shoulder with an irritated grunt.

"It's about time! What took you so long? Midnight's the appointed time, in case you've forgotten! Criminy!"

She kept her eyes directed forward. "Why are you so angry?"

"Angry? I'm not angry! What makes you think I'm angry?"

"You sound angry."

"I sound the way I always do!"

"Well, you always sound angry. Tonight, especially." She felt him squirming on her shoulder, leaves and twigs rustling, settling into place. "Tell me something about my father."

He spit like a cat. "Your father? What are you talking about?"

"I want to know something about my father."

"Well, I don't know anything about your father! I've told you that! Go ask your grandmother!"

She glanced down at him, riding her shoulder in sullen defiance. "Why is it that no one ever wants to talk about my father?

Why is it that no one ever wants to tell me anything about him?"

Pick kicked at her shoulder, exasperated. "It's rather hard to talk about someone you don't know, so that might explain my problem with talking to you about your father! Are you having a problem with your hearing, too?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she broke into a fast trot, jogging swiftly down the service road and past the nearest backstop, then cutting across the ball diamond toward the cliffs and the river. The humid night air whipped past her face as her feet flew across the newly mowed gra.s.s. She ran as if she were being chased, arms and legs churning, chest expanding and contracting with deep, regular breaths, blood racing through her in a hot pulse. Pick gave a surprised gasp and hung on to her T-shirt to keep from falling off. Nest could hear him muttering as she ran, his voice swept away by the rush of the air whipping past her ears. She disappeared into herself, into the motion of her arms and legs, into the pounding of her heart. She covered the open ground of the ball fields and the playgrounds, crossed the main roadway, hurdled the chain dividers, and darted into the trees that fronted the burial mounds. She ran with fury and discontent, thinking suddenly that she might not stop, that she might just keep on going, running through the park and beyond, running until there was nowhere left to go.

But she didn't. She reached the picnic benches across the road from the burial mounds and slowed, winded and shot through with the heat of her exertion, but calm again as well, distanced momentarily from her frustration and doubt. Pick was yapping at her like a small, angry dog, but she ignored him, looking about for Two Bears and the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi. She glanced down at her wrist.w.a.tch. It was almost midnight, and he was nowhere in sight. The burial mounds were dark and silent against the starry backdrop of the southern horizon where moonlight spilled from the heavens. The park was empty-feeling and still. Nothing moved or showed itself. Even the feeders were nowhere to be seen.

A trace of wood smoke wafted on the still air, pungent and invisible.

"Where is he?" she asked softly, turning slowly in the, humid dark, eyes flicking left and right, heart pounding. "Here, little bird's Nest," his familiar voice answered, and she jumped at the sound of it. He was standing right in front of her, so close she might j have reached out to touch him if she had wished to do so. He had materialized out of nowhere, out of the heat and the night, i out of the ether. He was stripped to the waist, to his baggy pants and worn army boots, and he had painted his face, arms, and chest in a series of intricate black stripes. His long hair was still braided, but now a series of feathers hung from it. If he had seemed big to her before, he looked huge now, the coppery skin of his ma.s.sive chest and arms gleaming behind the bars of paint, his blunt features chiseled by shadows and light.

"So you've come," he said softly, looking down at her with curious eyes. "And you've brought your shy little friend."

"This is Pick." She introduced the sylvan, who was sitting up straight on her shoulder, eyeing the big man.

"Charmed," Pick snapped, sounding anything but. "How come you can see me when no one else can?"