Shadowfires

blackened eye, which was now almost swollen shut. “Hit me and knocked me down and kicked me twice, kicked my legs…”

Rachael remembered the ugly bruises on Sarah's thighs.

“… grabbed me by the hair…”

Rachael took the girl's left hand, held it.

“… dragged me into the bedroom…”

“Go on,” Rachael said.

“… just tore my pajamas off, you know, and… and kept yanking on my hair and hitting me, hitting, punching me…”

“Has he ever beaten you before?”

“N-no. A few slaps. You know… a little roughhouse. That's all. But tonight… tonight he was wild… so full of hatred.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Not much. Called me names. Awful names, you know. And his speech — it was funny, slurred.”

“How did he look?” Rachael asked.

“Oh God…”

“Tell me.”

“A couple teeth busted out. Bruised up. He looked bad.”

“How bad?”

“Gray.”

“What about his head, Sarah?”

The girl gripped Rachael's hand very tightly. “His face… all gray… like, you know, like ashes.”

“What about his head?” Rachael repeated.

“He… he was wearing a knitted cap when he came in. He had it pulled way down, you know what I mean, like a toboggan cap. But when he was beating me… when I tried to fight back… the cap came off.”

Rachael waited.

The air in the car was stuffy and tainted by the acid stink of the girl's sweat.

“His head was… it was all banged up,” Sarah said, her voice thickening with terror, horror, and disgust.

“The side of his skull?” Rachael asked. “You saw that?”

“All broken, punched in… terrible, terrible.”

“His eyes. What about his eyes?”

Sarah tried to speak, choked. She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment, struggling to regain control of herself.

Seized by the irrational but quite understandable feeling that someone — or something—was stealthily creeping up on the Mercedes, Rachael surveyed the night again. It seemed to pulse against the car, seeking entrance at the windows.

When the brutalized girl raised her head again, Rachael said, “Please, honey, tell me about his eyes.”

“Strange. Hyper. Spaced out, you know? And… clouded…”

“Sort of muddy-looking?”

“Yeah.”

“His movements. Was there anything odd about the way he moved?”

“Sometimes… he seemed jerky… you know, a little spastic. But most of the time he was quick, too quick for me.”

“And you said his speech was slurred.”

“Yeah. Sometimes it didn't make any sense at all. And a couple times he stopped hitting me and just stood there, swaying back and forth, and he seemed… confused, you know, as if he couldn't figure where he was or who he was, as if he'd forgotten all about me.”

Rachael found that she was trembling as badly as Sarah — and that she was drawing as much strength from the contact with the girl's hand as the girl was drawing from her.

“His touch,” Rachael said. “His skin. What did he feel like?”

“You don't even have to ask, do you? 'Cause you already know what he felt like. Huh?” the girl said. “Don't you? Somehow… you already know.”

“But tell me anyway.”

“Cold. He felt too cold.”

“And moist?” Rachael asked.

“Yeah… but… not like sweat.”

“Greasy,” Rachael said.

The memory was so vivid that the girl gagged on it and nodded.

Ever so slightly greasy flesh, like the first stage — the very earliest stage — of putrefaction, Rachael thought, but she was too sick to her stomach and too sick at heart to speak that thought aloud.

Sarah said, “Tonight I watched the eleven o'clock news, and that's when I first heard he'd been killed, hit by a truck earlier in the day, yesterday morning, and I'm wondering how long I can stay in the house before someone comes to put me out, and I'm trying to figure what to do, where to go from here. But then little more than an hour after I see the story about him on the news, he shows up at the door, and at first I think the story must've been all wrong, but then…oh, Christ… then I knew it wasn't wrong. He… he really was killed. He was.”

“Yes.”

The girl tenderly licked her split lip. “But somehow…”

“Yes.”

“… he came back.”

“Yes,” Rachael said. “He came back. In fact, he's still coming back. He's not made it all the way back yet and probably won't ever make it.”

“But how—”

“Never mind how. You don't want to know.”

“And who—”

“You don't want to know who! Believe me, you don't want to know, can't afford to know. Honey, you've got to listen closely now, and I want you to take to heart what I'm saying to you. You can't tell anyone what you've seen. Not anyone. Understand? If you do… you'll be in terrible danger. There're people who'd kill you in a minute to keep you from talking about Eric's resurrection. There's more involved here than you can ever know, and they'll kill as many people as necessary to keep their secrets.”

A dark, ironic, and not entirely sane laugh escaped the girl. “Who could I tell that would believe me, anyway?”

“Exactly,” Rachael said.

“They'd think I was crazy. It's nuts, the whole thing, just plain impossible.”

Sarah's voice had a bleak edge, a haunted note, and it was clear that what she had seen tonight had changed her forever, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. She would never be the same again. And for a long time, perhaps for the rest of her life, sleep would not be easily attained, for she would always fear what dreams might come.

Rachael said, “All right. Now, when we get you to a hospital, I'll pay all your bills. And I'm going to give you a check for ten thousand dollars as well, which I hope to God you won't throw away on drugs. And if you want me to, I'll call your parents out there in Kansas and ask them to come for you.”

“I… I think I'd like that.”

“Good. I think that's very good, honey. I'm sure they've been worried about you.”

“You know… Eric would've killed me. I'm sure that's what he wanted. To kill me. Maybe not me in particular. Just someone. He just felt like he had to kill someone, like it was a need in him, in his blood. And I was there. You know? Convenient.”

“How did you get away from him?”

“He… he sort of phased out for a couple of minutes. Like I told you, he seemed