Weal tried to swallow, but his spit had dried. He felt his throat close
up, dry and hot as though it were packed with sand. He realized then
that he had effectively buried himself alive, walled himself into a system
of underground caves that predated the Parr family’s dynamiting of this
part of the country by millennia.
Yes, yes, buried alive. All very melodramatic. Typical crazy person. But
by the way—not that it remotely matters at this moment—but how did ashes
get into a tunnel?
Weal looked at the heap of ashes—they were ashes, weren’t they?
How did they get down here? Who brought them? And when? How?
Traces of the vision he’d had before coming to consciousness down here
floated back to him. He’d seen ash, piles of it, as though there had been
a great burning. He’d smelled the burning bones and watched the wind
carry the fragments into the air and scatter them across the cliffs.
Ash. Bones.
This
ash?
These
bones?
“Lord,” he whispered. “Where are you? If you’re real, please answer.
Please only answer if it’s really you. Please show me what to do.” He waited,
dreading the sound of the second voice, the mocking voice that sounded
like his own. But there was nothing. “Please,” he said again. “Please.”
Wake me. Wake me.
“How?” he screamed. “Don’t go away again! Tell me, how?”
You know how. I showed you many times before.
“But I can’t do
that
! I’ll die! I can’t kill
myself
! I killed all those people
for
you
!”
WAKE ME!
He bowed his head in submission and acceptance. With a sob, Weal
pulled the knife out of his pocket and tested the blade with the ball of
his thumb. He winced as it sliced through the skin. Blood rose to the cut
and spilled down his thumb, flowing over the palm. In the light of the
flashlight, it looked black on the knife blade.
He took a deep breath, then rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and
jacket. He cut the flesh of his wrist with one definitive, transversal
downward stroke, severing the ulnar artery. The pain was sharp and
immediate, but Weal made no sound. Instead, he squeezed the upper middle part of his forearm and pumped. He raised his arm and watched
the blood drain out of his body, running down his arm onto the pile of
ashes in the stone concavity where the ashes had rested undisturbed for
three hundred years under Spirit Rock and the cliffs that ringed Bradley
Lake.
There was a sound like fat being dropped onto a hot griddle and the
smell of burning meat.
Above ground,
a great flock of disparate nightbirds took to the sky
from every treetop on Spirit Rock—a shocked, squawking black cloud, a
cacophony of harsh screams soaring into the night.
Below the mass of airborne birds, the first coyote yelped a sharp,
terrified bark that became a shriek. Its mate joined in. Then another,
and another, until the sound of their howling became deafening. Every
dog in Parr’s Landing took up the cry, including Finn’s dog, Sadie, whose
bloodcurdling lament was loud enough to wake Finn from a deep sleep in
which he dreamed of Morgan Parr standing nude on the edge of Bradley
Lake, beckoning him to join her in the black water.
“Awww fuck, Sadie,”
Finn groaned, his voice thick with sleep. “You
ruined
it.”
Vengefully, he lobbed a pillow at the dog who was standing rigidly
on point beside his bedroom window staring at the glass. “Do you want
to go out, girl?” he said, feeling guilty for throwing the pillow. “Do you?
Do you want to go outside? Come. Come, Sadie, let’s go outside!”
She whined, bounding ahead, her claws scrabbling madly on the
floor. She ran like she had to take the world’s most portentous piss, and
scratched madly at the metal screen door, making an even more unholy
racket than she had with her howling.
“Coming, coming,” Finn said. He knew that if Sadie howled like that
again, his parents would wake up and then there would be hell to pay. He
opened the back door and nudged her outside, shutting the door quickly.
She had a doghouse out there; she could sleep in it tonight. Fucking dog.
Finn went back to his bed and tried to find his Morgan dream again,
already suspecting that the moment had passed, but willing to try anyway.
Richard Weal knew
he must be dying, because the cavern was full of
incandescent red light and heat that streamed blindingly upward from
the pile of ashes in the depression of rock. He was dying, and these were
the gates of heaven. Or, more likely, hell.
He covered his face with his bloody hand and tried to shield his eyes
from the luminescence that was now so bright he could no longer see the
walls of the cave. His knees gave way and buckled under his weight, and
he fell to the ground in the earliest stages of hypovolemic shock. Just
losing consciousness, Weal realized he was no longer alone.
He lay on his side, squinting into the brilliance, trying to see.
As the light began to fade, Weal became aware that the black-robed
man he’d
imagined
in the moments before he’d found the ashes—the
man who
wasn’t
—had stepped out of his feverish brain and into the
world, and was bending over him.
When the man lowered his lips to Weal’s throat, he tried to turn
his head to accommodate the grateful kiss—what else could it be, but a
benediction of gratitude to Weal for having found him, for having saved
him, for releasing him from his prison? But he was too weak to form the
words. He tried to apologize to the black shape towering over him for not
being able to stand, for forcing him to kneel—surely the kneeling one
should be Weal, not his friend—but no words came out. Weal realized
that words would be beside the point, because his friend knew everything
about him already, loved him just as he was, and knew he was sorry and
had already forgiven him. He felt the man’s cold lips caress the tender
skin below his jawline, then the scraping points of two sharp teeth.
The pain when he bit down was incredible, but it vanished almost
before it had even registered. As he felt the blood drain from his body,
Richard Weal felt himself pulled up into a swirling vortex of crimson and
gold light. For the briefest possible moment, Weal caught a glimpse of
a glittering necropolis of souls, a dimension of pure love and endless
wisdom. Its inhabitants reached out, their arms outstretched to embrace
him, to join him to them, to forgive him and to guide him into their
inanimate dimension that was opening before him and beckoning his
soul to join the mass of others.
Not this! Make me like you! Make me like you! You promised! I want
to live forever! This isn’t what I killed for! This isn’t what I died for! YOU
PROMISED!
The crimson sky turned black and cold and violent.
The dead recoiled in horror at his fury. They recognized him for what
he was, for what he was becoming, and they fled in terror lest they, too,
found themselves sucked into the black circumgyration of supernatural
energy that dragged Richard’s enraged, insane soul back into the prison
of his own dead body—the body lying on the stone floor of the cave
where the creature he’d resurrected was still feeding on the last drops of
his life.
After the bar had closed,
they had gone to Elliot’s place instead of
Donna’s, because Elliot said he had to get up early in the morning. She
didn’t find it particularly chivalrous on his part, but Donna wanted his
company more than she wanted to be in her own bed, so she’d acquiesced.
He’d asked her to stay the night and offered to drive her home afterwards,
but she’d brought her own car and didn’t relish the prospect of leaving
it in front of Elliot’s house overnight, advertising her whereabouts to
the entire town. For the same reason, she didn’t want to leave her car in
the O’Toole’s parking lot overnight so they could all wonder where she’d
been instead of knowing.
In the past, sex with Elliot had always been a deeply pleasurable
experience. He was a devoted, attentive lover who took her satisfaction
as a point of personal pride. He’d bend his body to her pleasure while
taking his own, always leaving her satiated.
Tonight had been different.
It had all started the way it always did, the way she liked it, with his
hands and mouth deftly playing her body, with Elliot offering his own
body for her exploration, gratification, and pleasure. But when she’d
slipped her hands between his legs to stroke his shaft, she found it soft.
It’s me,
Donna thought, abruptly and self-consciously aware of the
slackening of her body and the way it must have changed, how different
it must feel to him since they had first slept together years before. What
she saw in the mirror at home looked just fine to her, but here, with Elliot
McKitrick on top of her . . .
She guided him onto his back and knelt between his legs, using her
mouth on his cock, gently squeezing his nipples between her fingers until
she felt him harden, then laid back herself and urged him along using the
filthy words she knew he liked. She arched her back, offering her mouth
and her breasts to his kisses the way she had always done, which he’d
always liked before.
“Turn over,” he’d said in a muffled voice she’d never heard before—a
compressed, harsh, entirely unfamiliar but oddly thrilling voice. “Roll
over on your stomach.”
When she did what she was told, he entered her from behind. At
first his movements were languorous and rhythmic and she moaned
with familiar pleasure. But as the strokes quickened, he thrust harder
and with more force.
Then Elliot pulled out and slipped his cock into her ass.
Donna gasped at the sudden invasion. Wanting to please him, she
willed herself to relax and take him in. His fingers dug into her hips as
he pushed. When he entwined his fingers in her hair and yanked on it as
though it were a bridle, she cried out in shock and pain. She felt his body
buckle and he collapsed against her, driving her into the bed with him on
top as wave after wave of his climax shuddered through his body.
“We’ve never done it like that before,” she said. When there was no
reply, she asked, “Was it OK? I mean, doing it that way?”
“It was great,” he said.
Afterwards, he’d sat naked on the edge of the bed with his face in
his hands. She ran her fingers along the scallops of muscle between his
shoulder blades. When she’d touched his shoulder, he’d flinched.
She’d asked him if he was crying and he said, “No, of course not,
why?” as though it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard, which hurt
Donna’s feelings more than anything else. When she asked him what was
wrong, he told her he’d had a bad day, then apologized for snapping at
her and offered to drive her home.
“I brought my car, Elliot, remember? You have to get up early, you
said.”
“Right, sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Donna. Really, I am. I have a lot on
my mind. Work, you know. I’ll make it up to you next time.”
Donna said nothing. She kissed him on the cheek, then picked her
jeans and pink blouse off the floor where she’d left them.
I’m too young to feel like this,
she thought bitterly.
Like something
secondhand, like something in the fridge that’s turned
. Her clothes smelled
like beer and cigarette smoke after the fresh-laundry scent of Elliot’s
sheets, but she couldn’t dress quickly enough to suit her purposes. The
only thing Donna wanted was to be out of Elliot’s house and back in her
own bedroom, with her cat and her cold sheets, where at least there was
no one to make her feel the way she felt right now.
“Next time,” Elliot promised as she said goodbye. But they both
knew there wouldn’t be a next time. And Donna, for one, was fine with
that.
In the car, she lit a cigarette, then turned the key in the ignition and
pulled out of Elliot’s driveway, heading towards her house on the other
side of town, thinking that Elliot McKitrick was a prick of the first order,
but that it still hurt like hell.
At 4:30 a.m.,
Donna had parked her car in her driveway and put the
keys in her purse. A light, cold rain had begun to fall and she hurried up
the driveway to avoid getting drenched.
The perfect ending to a perfectly
awful night,
she thought.
She was nearly at the front door of her house when she heard
something pass through the air above her head. The sound disoriented
her. When she was eight, her mother took Donna with her to visit an
elderly aunt who’d spent her life in a convent outside of Montréal. The
sisters kept a working farm, and while her mother visited with the aunt,
one of the younger nuns showed her the dovecote attached to the barn.
Donna had lain on her back in hay and watched the doves fluttering
above her. She’d closed her eyes, listened, and imagined they were angels.
That’s what this was like—the ripple of wings, but louder and heavier
than doves’ wings. Instinctively, she looked up towards the sound, but
saw nothing in the night sky except stars and the distant mass of the
cliffs.
Then the sound came again, directly over her head this time.
The last thing Donna Lemieux ever saw was something huge,
something with wings—no, not something,
someone,
and not wings,
outstretched arms—fall from the sky, smashing her into the gravel of
her driveway. Her mind had time to register only two things: first, that
the body on top of her was male and that it—
he
—was fiercely strong.
And secondly, that she was about to die here on her own driveway in sight
of her own front door. She tried to scream, but the impact of the body
crashing down on top of her back had driven the air from her lungs and
she lay on the driveway gasping for air.
Then her world went white.