The Taking Part 23

Bethany said, "And I held Elric 'cause I was afraid he'd go right up with her."

Bewildered by this tale, which on any other night would have sounded like a report of a nightmare or a hallucination and might have been easily dismissed, Molly said, "What do you mean through through the ceiling?" the ceiling?"

"Through," said Eric. "Like the ceiling wasn't solid at all, just a dream dream of a ceiling." of a ceiling."

Elric said, "Like when a magician puts his a.s.sistant in a box and saws her in half, and the blade goes right through her legs but she isn't hurt and the blade isn't bent."

"We thought we would float up, too, since they did," Bethany recalled, "but we didn't."

Eric said, "We climbed the pull-down ladder into the attic, and they were screaming up there."

"Not Grandma," Bethany reminded him.

"No. She was getting ready to go crazy later."

"Not true."

"Is true."

"Anyway," Elric continued, "they were screaming and trying to hold on to things, like the attic rafters."

Eric said, "Screaming at me and Elric, 'You little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, do do something.'" something.'"

"They used lots of words, all worse than 'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,'" Bethany said. "But we agreed months months ago never to talk like they do." ago never to talk like they do."

"We would've done something," Eric said, "but there wasn't anything we could could do, and they couldn't hold, so they went right through the roof." do, and they couldn't hold, so they went right through the roof."

They turned the corner into a street where half the trees were festooned with gray moss, like a scene from the swamps of Louisiana or from the mind of Poe on opium. The gnarled trunks were embossed with luminous lichen and deformed by growths that Molly had not seen before, ringworm forms the size of ashcan lids, fat and festering under the bark.

"We couldn't get onto the roof," Elric told Molly, "we couldn't see what happened after that."

"But we could hear them out there," Bethany said solemnly.

"Screaming," Eric said, "out there in the rain above the house."

"We were scared."

"Real scared."

"So pretty quick their voices faded in the rain," Eric said.

"They were beamed up," Bethany explained.

"To the mother ship," the twins said in unison, shaped by the enduring age of techno-fantasy that their parents and grandparents had bequeathed them.

"Mother ship. That's what we think," their sister agreed. "So they'll be back. People who get beamed up sooner or later get beamed down again, but sometimes in other places."

Even in the middle of the street, they had to pa.s.s under the spreading boughs of the infected trees. Molly almost turned back, but they were on the last leg of the shortest route to the tavern.

In the windless stillness, Molly thought she heard furtive noises overhead. Squinting up into the fretwork of branches, which at fifteen feet vanished in the purple fog, she could not see much, for where the limbs were not leafed or hung with moss, they were leafed and and hung with moss. hung with moss.

The kids, creeped out as well, resorted to more chatter to talk themselves through this haunted woods.

"When we went up into the attic, after Grandma," Elric told Molly, "this thing was there, though we didn't see it at first."

"We smelled it though, right away," said Eric.

Bethany said, "It smelled like rotten eggs and burnt matches."

"It smelled like s.h.i.t," Elric said bluntly.

"p.o.o.p," Bethany corrected, clearly disapproving of his use of the vulgarity. "Rotten eggs, burnt matches, and p.o.o.p."

Through the piercings in the woody fretwork above them, against the purple backglow of the luminous overcast, Molly saw quick and fluid movement. She glimpsed too little to judge the form or size of whatever tracked them from branch to branch.

"We didn't see the thing until Grandma was gone through the roof," said Elric.

"And then we didn't exactly see it," Bethany recalled.

"The power hadn't gone off yet," Eric said, "so there was a light in the attic."

Elric remembered: "But when you looked at the thing straight on, you couldn't see any details, only this shape."

"And it kept changing changing shape," said Bethany. shape," said Bethany.

"You could see it clearest like from the corner of your eye," said Eric. "It was between us and the attic trapdoor, and it was coming toward us."

"Then we were way way scared," said Bethany. scared," said Bethany.

"s.h.i.tless," said Elric, but he at once apologized to his sister, although perhaps not with complete sincerity. "Sorry, Grendel."

"Dork," said the girl.

"Geek."

"Walking fart," she countered.

The longer they proceeded beneath the canopy of branches, the more movement that Molly detected above them, although it remained stealthy. She suspected that they were accompanied by many arboreal presences, not just a single creature.

When she glanced back at Neil, Abby, Johnny, and Virgil, she saw that they, too, were aware of the secretive travelers in the trees.

Neil held the shotgun in both hands, in a semi-relaxed grip, the muzzle pointed upward as he walked, ready to swivel left or right and fire into the branches at the first provocation. This lovely man had pa.s.sed thirty-two years in gentle pursuits-scholar, shepherd, cabinetmaker-but this night he'd proved to be a courageous protector in a pinch.

"The thing in the attic," Elric said, "might've got us if she hadn't made it back off."

"Would've gotten us for sure, for sure," said Bethany.

"She just sort of shimmered out of thin air. She was like that guy in that old movie, that Star Wars Star Wars guy," Eric said, "but she wasn't a guy, and she didn't have a light sword-or any sword." guy," Eric said, "but she wasn't a guy, and she didn't have a light sword-or any sword."

Immediately ahead of Molly, though not stirred by a breeze, leaves spoke to leaves, moss trembled at this conversation, and a hand of one of their stalkers appeared, only the hand, gripping a branch for perch, for balance.

"Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi," Elric said.

"That's the guy," Bethany agreed. "An old guy."

The revealed hand was approximately the size of one of Molly's, perhaps with an extra digit, fiercely strong by the look of it, deep scarlet, scaly, reptilian.

"She wasn't old though," said Eric.

"Pretty old," Bethany disagreed.

"Not as old as the Star Wars Star Wars guy." guy."

"No, not that old."

Four knuckles per finger, endowed with black claws as pointed as rose thorns, the scarlet hand released the limb and vanished into foliage as the nimble creature proceeded ahead of them.

Speaking of the menacing presence encountered in their attic, Elric said, "I don't know how she made it stay away from us."

"She spelled it away," Bethany replied.

Molly wondered how something her size could move so swiftly from tree to tree, yet in near silence and with so little disturbance of the leaves and moss. And she wondered how many of them were swarming through the branches both below and above the dense fog.

"She didn't spell it away," Eric said impatiently.

"Magic words," Bethany insisted. "'The force be with you.'"

Molly counseled herself to keep moving. Intuition told her that any hesitation would be interpreted as weakness and that any sign of weakness would invite attack.

"That's stupid," Eric said. "She didn't say 'the force be with you' or anything like that."

"Yeah, so what did she say?"

They were just fifty feet from the next intersection. Ahead lay Main Street, with three generous lanes of pavement instead of two narrow ones; trees did not overhang the entire width of it, as they did here.

"I don't remember what she said," Eric admitted.

"Me neither," his brother said.

"She said something, something," Bethany declared.

Just three steps ahead of them, the scarlet hand or one like it appeared on another bareness of branch.

Molly considered firing her pistol into the tree. Even if she hit the creature and killed it, however, this might be reckless. Instinct-which, with intuition, was all she had to go on-told her that firing a shot might invite instant vicious a.s.sault by others in the wooden highways overhead.

Simultaneous with the appearance of the hand, an appendage, at least four feet long, red mottled with green, more than an inch in diameter at the shank but dwindling to a ta.s.seled and barbed whip at the end, perhaps a tail, slid out of the leaves, drooped down before them in a lazy arc-then snapped up, shearing moss, and out of sight.

Bethany and her brothers had seen this sinuous display. They had been meant to see it. The exposed tail was intended to be a challenge and a prod to panic.

The kids halted, clutching at one another for rea.s.surance.

"Keep moving," Molly whispered, "but don't run. Walk. Just like you were doing."

Fear made the children cautious, but a slow pace was better than a sprint, which might, as with a tiger, invite pursuit. They would not win a chase.

They were thirty feet from the end of the canopy.

As if all these terrors were a mad composition, systemized in meter, orchestrated, out of the bleak morning came again the weeping of a woman, answered by the more distant but nonetheless miserable weeping of a man, and also ahead of Molly and to her right, an iron manhole cover rattled in the blacktop, knocked upon from below by some restless ent.i.ty, perhaps by the headless body of Ken Halleck.

44.

HUMAN WEEPING OF INHUMAN SOURCE, RED reptiles as big as cougars in the trees, a headless dead man or something worse knocking on the manhole cover, knocking to be released from the storm drain: Mere anarchy had been set loose upon the world, a blood-dimmed tide that threatened to wash sanity up by the roots, tangle it like weeds, and sweep it away.

Molly kept moving, although she doubted they would escape the canopy of trees. To her surprise, they reached the intersection with Main Street, where the only architecture overhead was the ceaselessly changing, frescoed purple vaults of fog on fog.

Before she could indulge in even a timid hope, one of those silent luminous craft appeared again in the overcast, racing toward them out of the west, one second glimpsed, six fast heartbeats later hovering overhead. Shape without form. Light that did not reveal its source. Its awesome power was suggested by the absolute stillness of its levitation.

As before, Molly felt physically scrutinized to a cellular level, every filament mapped in the rich braid of her emotions, every turning of her mind from its brightest to its darkest places explored in an instant and understood in finest detail. By a.n.a.lytic rays, by probing currents, by telepathic scans, by science and technology beyond the conception of the human mind, she was pored through, and known. known.

In the previous encounter, she had felt naked, terrified, and ashamed. She felt all those things now, and in no less measure than before.

The children appeared to be bedazzled, as might be expected, and afraid, as they should be, but she did not believe that any of them felt violated as profoundly as she did.

Glancing at Neil, in whose face and slightest gestures she could always read volumes, Molly saw more than raw fear; she recognized terror in all its subtleties from anguish and anxiety to incipient panic, but also what might have been piercing sorrow. Struggling with his sorrow was anger at this intrusive examination, to which no name could accurately be given except perhaps "psychological rape."

Her heart flooded with anger, too, in a volume to rival blood, for it seemed to her that if their world was to be taken and if all of them were to be slaughtered sooner or later, then they were owed the minimal mercy of a swift and easy death. Instead she felt as if she were a living toy on a leash held by a vicious master: savagely teased, tormented, tortured.

She couldn't explain to herself how an extraterrestrial species, a thousand years more advanced than humanity, with the wisdom to beat the limitations of the speed of light and cross galaxies in a clock tick, could be so barbarous, so pitiless. A civilization sufficiently sophisticated to construct ships larger than mountains and machines capable of transforming entire worlds in mere hours ought also to be a civilization exquisitely sensitive to suffering and injustice.

A species capable of the merciless destruction committed in the night just past, however, must be without conscience, without remorse, incurably sociopathic.

Evil.

Surely, a civilization built by individuals motivated by pure self-interest, incapable of empathy, without pity for others, would attain no grand heights. Evil would turn upon itself, as it always did, and such a species would reduce itself to dust long before it could reach for the stars.

Unless...

Unless perhaps it was a hive, hive, in which every individual lacked a conscience, lacked even the concept of pity, reveled in cruelty, and had no personal ident.i.ty different from those of all the other billions of its kind. Then each might direct its evil urges outward from the hive, bend its intellect to the creation of dark technologies, in the interest of furthering the evil of all. Their need to destroy, their implacable fury, would be brought to bear upon anything not of the hive or not of use to the hive. They would raze, ruin, and extirpate everything in their path. in which every individual lacked a conscience, lacked even the concept of pity, reveled in cruelty, and had no personal ident.i.ty different from those of all the other billions of its kind. Then each might direct its evil urges outward from the hive, bend its intellect to the creation of dark technologies, in the interest of furthering the evil of all. Their need to destroy, their implacable fury, would be brought to bear upon anything not of the hive or not of use to the hive. They would raze, ruin, and extirpate everything in their path.

If for a decade or a century they colonized Earth, they would eventually move on to some other world. They would leave behind a lifeless sphere, as barren as Mars, all sand and rock and ice and mournful wind.

The as yet unseen destroyers of worlds delighted delighted in the havoc they unleashed, in the terror and the blood. Their driving need was the destruction of all that was Other to them, and their sole bliss was the suffering they administered. This truth could be confirmed by ample evidence everywhere in Black Lake. in the havoc they unleashed, in the terror and the blood. Their driving need was the destruction of all that was Other to them, and their sole bliss was the suffering they administered. This truth could be confirmed by ample evidence everywhere in Black Lake.