Soulstorm. Part 22

It was dark on the balcony. Whitey Monckton eased his arm up and looked at the glowing LED crystals. 3:24, 10-25. He had trouble deciding what the numbers meant, and then it came to him. Six days. Six days and nights until something inside that house went click and doors and windows would open and people would come. He tried to remember how long he had been up here. Two days maybe? Three at most. The pains in his body had receded to little more than dull aches that never slept. Now the real pain was in his stomach, a sharpness as though the steel ball of a mace were rolling around inside, sending its spikes into every area of his midsection. His thirst had been quenched by the rainwater that had gathered in depressions where the tiles were chipped and broken, but the hunger was growing worse: From time to time he eyed the ladder with longing, but knew he could never use his shattered legs and shoulder to take him down it. And if he could, what then? Drive the Jeep with his teeth? Crawl the mile to the cabin by dragging himself on one arm? Forget it, I probably couldn't even clear the railing.

His strength had returned slowly after the accident. He had slept in spite of the pain and was surprised on awaking to find that he was still alive. Surprised and disappointed. At first he did not see how he could stay alive until someone came to help, but the bleeding had stopped and he was not coughing or pa.s.sing blood. He urinated and defecated where he lay, pulling his pants down one-handed when the urge took him. After a while he would drag himself farther along the wall.

He could not hear any trace of the thing that lived there, that had toppled him from the ladder. Strangely enough, he held no malice toward it for that. If a bear you're hunting attacks you, do you hate the bear for it? No, he'd gone to The Pines intending to fight, and had been beaten. The thing would leave him alone now, and turn its attention back to those inside, those who still survived. That he hadn't been able to help them made him sad, particularly when he thought of Gabrielle Neville. But McNeely and Wickstrom were strong men. Perhaps they could still come out alive.

He wondered then if he would, and shivered with the cold, praying for the dawn to come soon.

Chapter Seventeen.

"I'm sick of Dostoevsky," McNeely growled, tossing down the book. Wickstrom and Gabrielle looked up in surprise. "I'm sorry," he went on, "it's just so d.a.m.ned . . . oppressive all of a sudden."

Wickstrom shrugged. "Okay with me. I don't think I've been getting it anyway. Besides, we're not even a third of the way through. No way we'd finish it before we leave, right?"

Gabrielle touched her tongue thoughtfully to the end of her brush. "Are you feeling all right, George? You look a bit pale."

He shook his head testily. "I'm fine. Just . . . I don't know what it is. I suppose I'm eager to leave."

"Nothing new there." Wickstrom smiled. "I've been eager to do that ever since we came here." He nodded toward Gabrielle. "Maybe you oughta take up painting, George. Get your mind off things."

McNeely glanced up quickly at Wickstrom, but the man's face was innocent. No way he would know, McNeely thought. No way he could possibly know. But what did he mean, get your mind off things? What things?

It was unlike McNeely to feel paranoia, and he struggled to hurl it from him. He stood up and crossed to Gabrielle's easel. Her painting was nearly completed, as perfect as any work he'd ever seen. The detail was superb, the texture exquisite, and the use of light rivaled the Flemish masters. "If I could paint like this," he said, "I would take it up."

"Have you ever tried?" Gabrielle asked. He shook his head no. "Here," she said, handing him a charcoal pencil and a sketch pad. "Try a drawing of Kelly."

He laughed and held the materials out to her. "No use," he said. "I nearly flunked art in high school."

"Aw, come on," said Wickstrom. "It's easy. Two circles for eyes, one for the nose, a line for the mouth. I won't move."

"Oh, h.e.l.l, all right." He felt a little irritated at their prodding, but decided that it might take his mind off thoughts of the ent.i.ty, thoughts that had been plaguing him despite his facile rationalizations. So he sat and started to sketch, and before too long he realized that what was taking form beneath his fingers was not the bunch of crude blocky lines he had expected, but a carefully rendered, technically flawless drawing of Kelly Wickstrom's head. His hand moved like quicksilver, shading, rubbing, finding just the right thickness of line; his head twitched from pad to subject, his eyes unmistakably sending the messages to those clever darting fingers to put the face on paper.

And George McNeely knew he was doing none of it himself. He sat amazed, watching his fingers move, pulled by phantom muscles, ghostly will, though it was still his hand, his muscles that performed the actual motion. It was as though he knew, knew all that Durer and Rembrandt and Goya had known (especially Goya, oh yes!), and now he was finished, the hand was his again, and he looked down at the drawing he had not made.

"My G.o.d," Gabrielle said softly.

"What?" Wickstrom hopped to his feet. "Done already?" He whistled when he saw the sketch. "I thought you said you flunked art."

"I, uh . . . I used to do some sketching like this," he lied. "That's all. I guess you never lose your talent completely, huh?"

Gabrielle stared at him, her forehead etched with disbelief.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

"Nothing. I just . . . find out more about you all the time."

Their eyes held until he tore his away. "I'm tired," he said. "Think I'll stretch out for a while." He crossed the room and lay down on the overstuffed sofa, pillowing his head on his forearm and facing the high back, but though his eyes were closed, he did not sleep. His head was too full of questions. He was certain that their strange talents were the gift of the thing. But what reason could there be for this new gift?

To show you.

McNeely stood in the cellar, watching the face. Upstairs, Wickstrom and Gabrielle lay sleeping. "Show us what?"

What we are capable of granting. Delicacy, beauty, art. There is that in us too. Not merely the brute force you saw in c.u.mmings.

"What's the point?"

The point is that we can do many things for you. And for the woman.

"But what do you want?"

We will tell you.

"Will you tell me the truth?"

The eyes of the face changed slightly, a wry cynicism invading them. It will do no harm. You would know eventually if you wished. It paused. But are you sure you wish to know?

"I'm sure."

We want to be away from here. We have been here for a long time.

"How long?"

Longer than you or any man could conceive. Beyond the memory of the race. There are those of us who wielded sticks and rocks to slay our enemies, who lived in holes in the rock and dressed in stinking skins. There are those who banded together for strength, and fashioned spears from sharp stones to pierce the hearts of those who stood against us. We are very old.

McNeely felt as he had when Wickstrom had brought forth his theory about the lights in the sky, a theory that McNeely now knew to be at least partially correct. It was as if a great cosmic gulf opened beneath his feet, and looking down into it, he could see all the times of man, back to when man was barely man at all, a splay-footed savage pounding at his prey with hammy fists, and beyond that, deep in the abyss, blackness unbroken by the twinkling of stars.

But we have the new in us as well. New ones all the time. We are not entirely primitive. We have great wisdom.

"But not enough," stammered McNeely, forcing his mind back from the chasm over which it tottered, "to free yourselves."

We know how to be free. But it is- It paused, as if deciding whether or not to reveal a secret. -difficult.

McNeely didn't want to talk about their escape yet. He had to find out more about the creature, what it was, what it wanted. He reversed, trying to think clearly yet obtusely enough so that the thing could not easily read his thoughts. "You said new ones. Even now?"

Even as we talk. We are always growing stronger.

"These are people? People who are dying?"

Who are dead. What needs to survive comes here, joins us.

"I still don't understand. What needs to survive?"

A part of certain men. Like Neville.

"Neville?" The thought dazed McNeely. "David Neville? David Neville is ... part of you?"

Part of him is part of us. The part that needed to survive.

"What part is that?"

The face smiled. The part that hates you. That hates Wickstrom. That hates his wife. That wants to kill you all.

McNeely could feel the muscles in his legs quiver in fear. In another few seconds he knew they would be too rubbery to hold him. He looked away from the face that held him enthralled, concentrated his gaze on the small shelf of canned goods against the fire chamber's walls until he felt the blood coming back to his face and the dizziness desert him. He thought it through, quickly and chaotically, using the canned goods as camouflage so the thing should not know, made the visions and thoughts dance and leap in his head so that they should be secret.

the thing that survives Elberta peaches Evil_________________________________16 oz. net weight hate corned beef hash_______________________all the hate survives

Ingredients: Beef, potatoes,

hate is made of________________________________beef stock, onions

Ingredients:

water, salt hate evil all the evil since time in saucepan, stir occasionally till since time began h.e.l.l.

till boiling This place is over medium heat This thing is to full boil h.e.l.l.

McNeely bit down on the inside of his cheek, hoping the pain would diffuse his thoughts, confuse his own mind so that the thing would stay confused as well. "The part that survives," he said in a weary voice, "is the part that seeks revenge?"

What survives is what is strongest.

"But you said that the part that hates survived Neville."

That was the strongest.

"Is that what always survives?"

Not always.

"What else then? Love?"

The face smiled twistedly at him, as at a foolish child. Love does not survive. Not here.

"Then what else? What else besides hate?"

Sometimes it is only need. There is no hate involved. But the need is strong. As strong as hate.

"The need for what?"

For blood. For pain. Often there is no hate in these things.

Oh, G.o.d, McNeely thought, oh G.o.d this thing is h.e.l.l Mary had a little lamb little lamb little lamb this is pure evil pure evil all the Mary had a little lamb its fleece all the evil that's ever been on earth was white as snow talk to it talk to it "How can there be no hate?" he asked. "How can that be?"

There was no hate in DeRais. No hate in Fish. No hate in Kurten. There was only need. Yet they are here.

DeRais? Fish? Kurten? The names, unread and unheard of for years, came back to McNeely. DeRais, the notorious child-killer who would coo to and cuddle young boys a second before he'd slash their throats; Albert Fish, the quiet old man who strangled little Grace Budd and then ate parts of her; Peter Kurten, the Dusseldorf killer who slew for joy alone-all psychopathic, all hideously insane, all evil in its purest form.

"They are here?" McNeely asked, his mind growing numb with its overload of horror.

Yes. We are here.

It was then that McNeely realized fully and for the first time to whom and what he was speaking. This face, this voice inside his head, was DeRais and Fish and Kurten. It was Attila and Hitler and Caligula and Jack the Ripper and all the evil that had lived on after a million million deaths, all here in one collective consciousness, one supremely G.o.dlike face that McNeely knew could not be its real face.

Surely you can understand need.

He looked up at it, and it seemed the face had changed, grown harder. "Me?"

The need for blood. For killing.

"You mean ... my being a soldier?"

It smiled. There is more than that. More than simply a job. You like killing.

McNeely shook his head.

It is a need in you. War. Battle. Death.

"No! It was. But no more."

You think now that you f.u.c.k women that need is gone.