He faced Ralph. 'Can we keep this quiet?'
'Definitely. At least until we figure out what it is. We don't want people panicking.' He took off his gloves. 'You know, I should be doing cartwheels over this. Something this rare doesn't come along in... well, it never comes along, to be honest about it. This is a coroner wet dream: something that's never been encountered before, a chance to get in all the journals. And as deputy assistant coroner, hell, this is a career maker.'
'But...' Miles prodded.
'But I'm not happy. I'm not excited.'
He looked at Miles. 'I'm scared.'
Miles shivered, looked over at Graham. Ordinarily, this would be the lawyer's cue to make some cynical, wiseass remark. But Graham merely looked pensive.
'What are you going to do?' Miles asked.
'I don't know. We'll take him in, but obviously I'm not going to do an autopsy if he's still moving. I'll call Bill and the chief, let them in on it, see what they come up with. For now, I guess we'll bring your father to the morgue, give him a private room, keep him strapped down and see what happens when the drugs wear off. You want to come along? You're welcome to ride in the wagon.' Miles looked back at Graham.
The lawyer tried to smile, only partially pulled it off. 'I think we'll follow in my car,' he said.
Miles awoke from a nightmare in which he was being chased through a maze by a jogging mummy with the rot ring face of Liam Connor. He sat up, blinked. It was light outside, and one look at the clock told him that he was supposed to have been at work two hours ago. He had not called the office or anyone from it, and he quickly reached across the bed, grabbed the phone, and called Naomi. He explained that his dad died and asked her to patch him through to either Perkins or Miller, but she told him she'd take care of it, just do what he had to do, call in when he could, all their prayers were with him. 'Thanks,' he said gratefully.
The next call was to the coroner's office. Ralph was still there, sounding dead tired, and he said there'd been no change. His father was still deceased.
And there was still muscle movement in the legs:
Miles asked what he'd been afraid to ask the night before. 'So does this mean he's a zombie.
'I don't know what it means,' Ralph admitted. 'None of us here do.'
Miles got up, took a shower, made himself some coffee. He was at loose ends and had no idea what he was supposed to do next. Ordinarily, he'd contact a mortuary, call friends and family, but right now everything was up in the air. He should definitely call his sister, he knew, but he didn't want to worry her, and decided to wait until their father was really and truly dead.
Really and truly dead.
He shook his head. He had the feeling that he was supposed to understand what was happening here. On some level perhaps he did, but any connections between his father's un-death and any related information in his own brain remained stubbornly buffed. He found himself thinking about his dad's recurring dream, about the occult books he'd checked out of the library. Had Bob known what was going to happen? Had he somehow been preparing himself?. And, if so, why hadn't he let Miles in on the secret?
His fathiwas--had been?--nothing if not organized, and a copy of his will, the title to his car, a breakdown of all his assets, and a key to a safety deposit box were in the desk folder marked DEATrt that he had shown Miles long before the stroke.
The safety deposit box, Miles assumed, contained the
original will and assorted other documents, perhaps some family photos or heirlooms. Valuables. Checking it out would at least give him something to do, so he drove down to the bank. He was led into a vault by an elderly female teller who removed a long metal box from its niche in the wall and set it down on a table. Both he and the teller inserted their keys to unlock the box, then he thanked the woman, waiting until she had left the room before pulling up the lid.
Miles blinked in confusion. The box was filled with phials of powders and strange-looking roots floating in small bottles of clear liquid.
There were branches and leaves in sealed plastic bags, a necklace of teeth, what looked like a dried, flattened frog.
He stared, unmoving, thrown off balance by the sheer unanticipated lunacy of it all. Where were the documents he'd been expecting? The insurance policies? The letters? The family heirlooms?
And what the hell was all this crap?
None of the bags or bottles were labeled, but there was about them the aura of the occult, something that under the present circumstances did not exactly fill him with joy. The necklace of teeth was particularly disturbing, and he tried to think of why his father had such a thing, where he could have gotten it.
Gingerly, he took the items out of the box, spreading them out on the fake wood of the table. The teeth rattled in his shaking hand. He dropped the rough dusty frog. The materials looked like magic paraphernalia to him, the sort of stuff that was used to cast spells and concoct potions.
A chain of thoughts passed through his head. Magic. Voodoo.
Zombies.
He thought of his dead dad, walking around the disrupted bedroom, and he stared down at the bizarre paraphernalia on the table. His eyes were drawn once again to the necklace of teeth. He didn't like this.
He didn't like this at all.
And he sat alone in the vault, feeling very empty and very, very cold.
Fred Tunney awoke in the middle of the night to see a woman at the foot of his bed, a beautiful woman with long straight black hair, a perfect smile, and the most evil eyes he had ever beheld.
He knew instantly who she was, and he said her name, though he had never before met her, had never before seen her and had only heard about her from his parents.
Her smile grew wider and the smile, he saw, was evil too. He was frightened, of course, and surprised, but this had not come entirely out of the blue. For the past several months, he'd been dreaming about the old days, about the town, about magic, and about a wall of water that he could not escape and that bore down on him as his feet remained cemented to the floor of his bedroom. Now she was here.
His parents had always feared this would happen, and no matter how far they had run, the specter of the town and the curse had followed them, had hung over everything they'd done. He himself had never believed any of it, had thought they were overreacting, but he had been only a child when they left the town, and obviously they had possessed knowledge he had not.
He knew that now.
Fred sat up against the headboard, not taking his eyes
Off the woman. He could feel the power radiating from her, washing over him in waves that were the sensory equivalent of darkness. He was chilled to the bone, afraid in a way that he had never thought possible. She spoke his name. i 'Fred.' :
The fact that she knew who he was terrified him even more, and he pulled his knees up, preparing to throw off the covers and run like hell out of the room.
She was too fast for him, though. In one fluid movement she was around the side of the bed and next to him, cutting off his avenue of escape.
He could feel the coldness coming off her, and he looked up, into those horrify evil eyes, and he knew that he was only the latest victim. She was coming for all of them, one at a time, coming after all of the residents of the town, all of the residents who had escaped.
Her smile broadened as if in acknowledgment, and in a flash of insight that came from somewhere other than himself, he understood that. she was not just coming for them. She was after the builders, too. All of the government people who'd worked on the project.
A thought intruded on his mind. No, not a thought. An image. A headless body lying in a watery tomb. 'Fred,' she said again. And reached for him.
He tried to call on his powers, tried to right her off, but it had been too long and he had forgotten how. She
