Soulstorm. Part 25

McNeely chuckled self-deprecatingly. "So I'm not Escoffier. Nevertheless, you're elected for lunch, my dear."

"Don't 'my dear' me." She pouted archly, then grinned. "Grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches, snapper soup, white wine, eh?"

"Sounds good."

"Treselegant." McNeely laughed. "Say, why don't we build a fire in the fireplace? We haven't done that for ages." It would be something different, McNeely thought. Besides, he felt he could use the cheerfulness of a bright and snapping blaze. And, too, he was enough aware of his fears that he was able to draw a conscious parallel to the caveman trying to keep the dark beasts away from his home with the light that burned.

"I'd like that," Gabrielle concurred. "It does seem a little chilly today. I hope there's nothing wrong with the heating system."

"I doubt it," said Wickstrom. "Probably it just got a lot colder pretty fast outside and we haven't had a chance to catch up." Wickstrom looked at McNeely and frowned slightly. "Shall I help Gabrielle with the lunch, George?"

McNeely read his concern. He didn't want to leave Gabrielle alone in the kitchen, and yet he felt uncomfortable leaving McNeely alone as well. McNeely waved a hand casually. "Help Gabrielle. I'll be fine. You can open the wine."

"Hah!" laughed Gabrielle. "He's a fiasco with a corkscrew. That Bordeaux had more floating cork than after a shipwreck."

"Okay then. I'll stir the soup!"

They walked down the main stairs together and into the Great Hall. The wood was stacked neatly, and McNeely started to arrange kindling while the others watched, obviously hesitant to leave. "Go on," he said. "By the time you get back, this place will be warm as toast. Besides, I'm only twenty, thirty feet away, so you can yell if you need a sommelier."

Gabrielle and Wickstrom disappeared into the kitchen, and McNeely continued to pile the kindling, stacking it Indian-style. He'd generally been the firemaker of his squad, gathering just the right woods, knowing what was best for tinder, what to add to make the flames grow safely after the tinder caught, how to place the larger logs just so as to get the optimum amount of heat from the minimum amount of fuel. He grinned as he remembered the faces of the green ones who'd been ordered to help him gather firewood on the savannahs or places where scrub was all that kept it from being desert. "Jesus," they'd moaned, trudging behind him picking up sticks, "a fire in this heat-b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king brilliant." They'd been glad for it, though, after the sun had set and the cold crept in. Then they'd huddle toward the fire like the cold little animals they were. Like the cavemen.

G.o.d, but he wished he were there now, under a clean black night sky aflame with stars, with maybe just a crescent of moon low on the horizon like a scythe ready to reap those stars with its greater light. Cool outside air, breathed by trees and gra.s.ses, would pour into his lungs, and the earth would be comfortably firm beneath his bedroll, the rich earth-smell sharp in his nose. His mind would be racing with the seed of his senses, and his thoughts would be on the next day, a day filled with enemies, perhaps, but enemies one could see and touch and kill if necessary under the wide and arching canopy of sky that had looked down on all soldiers and all wars since time began.

And how many of those soldiers are here now, he thought. What energies could be left of those men who fought under Alexander, marched with Caesar, raged at the pa.s.s of Thermopylae? He'd met his share of evil men in battle. Perhaps one in ten, had that combination of qualities that marked him as a killer, one who relishes not the act of war, the excitement of battle, so much as the joy of taking human life. If that was not evil, surely nothing was, for it was that that had sparked the imaginations of DeRais, of Albert Fish, of those monsters the thing had freely admitted as being part of it.

And what of himself, he thought uneasily as he finished laying the last stick and took the box of matches from the low table on which they sat. What did he draw from war? There was excitement, yes, but in killing? True, he'd been ready to do solo work, but his targets (he would not think of them as victims) would have been somehow deserving of their fate. They would not have been gas station attendants whose wives wanted them done away with so that they could marry the neighbor they'd been f.u.c.king; these would have been generals, politicians, despots who had climbed to the top over the bodies of those weaker than themselves. Their deaths would have been good for their countries. In the eyes of the people, their killer would be a hero.

Hero. McNeely bit his lower lip and pondered the word. Wasn't that really what he'd always wanted to be? Wasn't that the one thing that would make everything else all right? n.o.body gave a d.a.m.n if Alexander the Great liked boys or if Patton got his rocks off by slapping people around. They transcended that by being heroes. And so had he, at least among the people he fought with. At least with most of them.

But why did he have to go on being a hero? Relief surged through him at the thought. He hadn't needed the money, but he'd been ready to go out and look down a gun barrel and kill someone who wasn't firing back. That was the one thing he'd never done, never had to do. And now he never would. Gabrielle had changed all that. He had changed all that.

The Pines had changed all that.

It was a disquieting truth, and to drive it into shadow, he struck a match and held it to the crumpled paper beneath the thinner twigs.

In a moment the fire was snapping and barking, growing larger while the sweet-spicy scent of wood smoke teased his senses. The larger branches were catching now, the air pushing the flames upward toward the skillfully balanced thicker pieces until a bright orange pyre glowed and chattered. Knots coughed and twigs laughed merrily; wooden pockets split and spat, showering sparks harmlessly on the stones that encircled the fireplace. Within a minute he was luxuriating in the warmth of it, stretching his muscles and thinking about how good Gabrielle's soup was going to taste.

Then the room shifted.

At first he thought it had been a trick of the light, that the flames had rattled his optic nerve so as to give the illusion that the walls had moved slightly. But as he looked more intently he became convinced that it was not an optical trick. The room had shifted, moved, hiccupped its giant stones inward. Again it occurred, and this time he heard the sc.r.a.pe of stone on stone above and below as the walls contracted, making the huge room hundreds of square inches smaller. He stood now, his heart tripping over its own beats, sweat that was not the result of the fire's heat starting to bead on his face. His stomach tingled.

Overhead something cracked. He looked up quickly and saw a section of beam disengage itself from a longer one and come hurtling downward to land thirty feet away. The ceiling seemed lower than it had been.

Again the walls moved spasmodically, jerkily, inward, like vast legless men dragging their misshapen trunks along the ground with sinewy arms, lurching drunkenly toward their goal. The ceiling grunted again and more debris fell, spattering about him like deadly rain. The actions of walls and ceiling increased in tempo and ferocity, shards of stone and splinters of wood snapping like dry twigs.

At first he had been too startled to run, then too fascinated. But he moved toward the northern end of the Great Hall now, with its twin escape routes of west and east wings. His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs only labored slowly, as if through a sea of thick jelly. His stomach knotted as he saw that the north wall had hopped, like some monstrous toad, so far toward him that only a foot of s.p.a.ce remained through which he could gain access to the wings. Another lurch of the walls, and that s.p.a.ce had disappeared. He looked above, wondering if he could climb up the wall and over the second story balcony; but the rough dark surface of the ceiling had already descended to the bottom of the third floor level and would cover the second long before he could find a route to it.

A tortured scream of metal filled the hall, and a glance directly above told him the chimney had surrendered to the unimaginable force that was compressing the room. It had bent until it could withstand the pressure no longer, and now tore itself in two, dumping hundreds of pounds of metal down onto the fire, scattering blazing logs and branches like sparks in a wind. McNeely gasped as a flaming oak limb batted him on the side of the head. He could hear his hair sizzle as he muscled it away.

The walls were hopping faster, sending physical shudders through McNeely's body with every lurch. The ceiling had lowered itself to less than twenty feet above him, covering the second floor balcony. The width of the room was down to only ten feet, and its length was now a good deal less than thirty. The s.p.a.ce actually seemed smaller because of the great bulk of the fireplace as well as the heavy pieces of refectory furniture that were all drawing madly together.

McNeely looked about in panic. Through the red-orange haze that clouded his vision, he recognized the dark thick velvet curtains at the south end of the hall, curtains growing ever nearer as the wall continued its clumsy but inexorable progress. They were, he remembered, the curtains to the small entryway with cloakrooms on either side. Perhaps, once behind them, he could nest there or in a cloakroom while the walls finally met, like a small fly escaped through a broken strand of the swatter.

He ran toward the curtain, a victorious joy surging through him at the thought of escape, a joy that turned to despair as he threw back the thick draperies to find the ma.s.sive solidity of a steel plate pressed flush against them.

Reason left him then, and he screamed in fear, turning and pressing his back against the plate. The walls lurched again and threw him forward onto the stone floor. He scuttled toward the hall's center, fearful that the next motion of the wall could pin his legs between wall and floor, crushing them like grain on a millstone.

The planes of the room moved faster now, covering nearly a foot with each stony spasm. McNeely drew his knees inward as the room's width narrowed to seven feet, then six, then five, the length shrinking to fifteen, ten, eight . . .

Where has the furniture gone? he thought madly. Where's the fireplace? The fire? All sucked up at the juncture of floor and walls?

Another lurch, walls closer still, and before his p.r.o.ne body could be pinned, McNeely leaped to his feet, striking his head on the ceiling only five feet from the floor.

"Jesus!" he screamed, and the word reechoed deafeningly in the tiny s.p.a.ce as the once Great Hall contracted again so that both side walls pressed against his shoulders and the ceiling struck the back of his bowed head with stunning force. He turned his shoulders diagonally so that the next spasm would not crush him, and the house moved again, pinning him snugly in a box of stone that would in no way conform to the shape of trunk and limbs as had the egg of his dream.

Every cell in him shrieked, every orifice opened in terror. Every fear he had ever known, every pain, every agony, seemed as nothing in comparison to the purity of the torture he now experienced. This, for George McNeely, was h.e.l.l.

And the house moved for the final time.

Death, he thought, was pleasant. There did not seem to be any constriction, any closing of his physical boundaries, at least nothing that could be felt. It was deliciously warm as well, and though he could not see, he could hear a comforting sound, like a low fire snapping and curling.

A fire.

He opened his eyes.

He was standing straight and unbowed four feet away from the round fireplace in the Great Hall of The Pines. The ceiling and walls were all in their usual places. There was not a trace of debris on the broad swath of the floor.

It never happened. It never happened, none of it. "Oh my G.o.d," he whispered to the crackling fire. "Am I going mad?"

Not yet.

He stiffened, nostrils flaring like a hound on the scent, his eyes stabbing into the dark corners of the hall. That voice had not been madness; he had heard it as clearly as he had heard the harsh whispers of the fire, as surely as he had heard that same voice speak to him before in the bowels of the house. And he knew what had made him see the walls close in and brought him to an agony he had not believed possible.

He turned and walked quickly out of the Great Hall and into the kitchen. The steamy smell of soup permeated the room. Both Wickstrom and Gabrielle looked at him as he entered, and from the way their faces suddenly became drawn with concern, he knew that what he had experienced was clearly limed on his own features.

"What happened?" Wickstrom asked with the certainty that something had.

McNeely smiled. It was a smile that made Gabrielle draw slightly away from him. "It's this place," he said. "You were right, Kelly. It's not good to be alone in here."

"What happened?" Wickstrom repeated.

McNeely shook his head. "They . . . it touched me. Touched my mind. Made me think things . . ."

"Oh, George . . ."

He looked at Gabrielle. "It didn't . . . hurt me."

"What things?" Wickstrom pressed. "Made you think what?"

"I thought . . . I thought the walls were closing in on me."

"Your claustrophobia," Gabrielle said.

McNeely nodded.

"You're sure it wasn't just . . . in your mind?"

"It was in my mind, but I didn't put it there."

They were silent for a moment, then Gabrielle asked, "What do we do?"

McNeely shrugged. "What can we do? Wait, that's all."

"s.h.i.t!" roared Wickstrom, slamming a hammy fist on the table with a force that made the dishes jump, spilling soup over the sides of the bowls. "What the h.e.l.l is it gonna do? It hasn't said boo to Gabrielle or me! It's just been f.u.c.king with you, George . . . oh, s.h.i.t," he moaned, slumping into a chair. "What does it want?"

"It wants you, George," said Gabrielle, her voice tight with tension. "Just like it wanted c.u.mmings."

He shook his head. "No . . . no, I don't . . ."

"I'm not letting you out of my sight, not for a minute." Her eyes were blazing, reminding McNeely once more of the lioness. But now, instead of vigilance, they burned with the fury of an animal whose mate is captured by natives. He felt that at any moment she would perform the equivalent of leaping the kraal wall and scattering the little black men in a b.l.o.o.d.y froth. But even a lioness would be helpless here.

"All right." He nodded. "You stay with me. Safety in numbers." He smiled.

"How long can it be," Wickstrom said softly, "till we're out of here?" No one answered.

"Too long," he said, sadness in his eyes.

They ate lunch half-heartedly around the fire. McNeely had only a few spoonfuls of soup and a little wine. He kept glancing around the room involuntarily, almost expecting the walls to move again. The others noticed his preoccupation but didn't mention it. As he picked at his food, his mind was set on one thing alone. He would have to talk with them again, have to do something to prevent a recurrence of what they had done to him after he'd built the fire. For he knew beyond doubt that if it happened again, he would come out of it either dead or totally insane. He could not remember the pain, but he could remember the fear, and though he hated to admit it, the fear was far greater than his ability to conquer it. It had been so great that it had made him go to Gabrielle and Wickstrom and tell, if not all, at least too much. What more could it make him do? He felt as if he would do anything, say anything to escape a next time, and he ached with the need to go and confront the ent.i.ty and beg, if need be, to be spared a similar experience. Where would it happen the next time, he wondered. In bed with Gabrielle? Would his mind feel the walls pressing them together, merging flesh to flesh until the two of them were nothing but an unrecognizable ma.s.s of blood and tissue? A spoonful of soup caught in his throat, and he coughed it away, grabbing a napkin and gesturing to the others to sit as they rose to aid him.

After lunch they shot some pool, then changed into gym clothes for a brief workout. Gabrielle's protectiveness was in evidence, and McNeely realized with a dull shock that her att.i.tude toward him was much the same as she had had toward Neville when they'd first come to the house-as though she expected his imminent death, feeling furious at her inability to prevent it. The sensation only heightened his unease, and he longed for their self-proclaimed night, when he could steal away to confront the source of his terror.

"Night" came slowly, but finally he and Gabrielle were in bed. Neither had the slightest interest in lovemaking, but she stayed pressed against him, her arm thrown across his chest as an unmistakable token of ownership that annoyed even as it comforted him. It seemed to take hours before she drifted off to sleep.

The face was waiting for him in the fire chamber, smiling and glowing as brightly as a small sun. If it had been weakened before, it had since recovered its robust strength. It was, he thought, positively rosy.

It is good to see you.

"What do you know of good?"

It looked humorously petulant, as if appreciating the play on words. Much.

"And of evil?"

All.

"Did you do that to me today?"

In the Great Hall.

"Yes."

It was not a great hall by the time we were done. It was rather small.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," McNeely snarled. Although he sensed that abject servitude would be the course to take, his anger was too strong to check.

It was a lesson. Simply a lesson. It was unfortunate that we had to resort to it, but you seem to require ever more direct proofs of our power. The smile broadened. We do not like to be ignored.

McNeely's jaw trembled. "Don't ... you won't do it again."

We hope it will not be necessary. You would be of no use to us dead or insane. The pale eyebrows rose, as if in sudden memory. By the way, David Neville wants you to know how much he enjoyed your cowardice in the Great Hall.

"Neville ..."

His delight was so great, he nearly broke away from us again. He would have finished you if he had. Perhaps next time he shall determine your discipline.

"All right! You want to scare me, I'm scared! I almost lost my mind up there. And maybe next time I will!" His voice softened dangerously. "Now what do you want? I mean, what exactly do you want me to do?"

We wish escape.

"How? How can you escape?"

You will take us out.

"Me?"

Within you. Of your own free will.

"My own free will? That's absurd! You do things to me like what you did up there-you force me into helping you-and you call that my own free will?"

You feel coerced?

"Yes!"

There is no coercion. The choice is yours.

"Choice? What choice?"

To help us or die. Everyone has a choice. So do not say you have no choice.

McNeely stared at the face, his words lost. The face looked back, watching him with seemingly slight interest. McNeely wondered if those strange eyes actually saw as humans see. "If I help you," he said finally, "will you let us go, let us leave here?"

When we are satisfied that you are in earnest.

"What do you ..."

You could attempt to lie to us. You could dissemble.