His eyes blazed, yellow fire threatening to fill them. “It was as if my head had become twice its size. My mind was clearer than it had ever been. I could smell and see with perfect sharpness. And I had a craving for destruction that I could barely control. I had spent a great many years learning control, Blake. But these feelings were overpowering me.
“And then it did overpower me. I found myself sucking blood from that thing in the doorway.
His smile disappeared. “Each day it gets worse. You must realize the kind of control it took for me to thrust a woman like Grace from my life, to turn myself away from the world for my art. But I’m not strong enough to fight this. Soon this thing I’ve become will have me. I won’t let that happen to me, Blake. You must kill me.”
“That’s something I just can’t do, Cave,” I said.
He smiled, the most human and friendly gesture he had made yet. “You really
Before I could answer, Cave was gone. Yellow filled his eyes like two bright vicious lamps. He thrashed wildly at his bonds; though Cave had set them tight, he apparently had known that if he acquiesced to the thing that fought for control of his being he would be able to break them.
“Cave,” I shouted, “for God’s sake!”
I turned and ran for the stairs.
Near the top, one of the rotted boards gave way, and I nearly tumbled back. It was then I heard Cave break his bonds. A great ruckus arose from the workshop; I heard the sound of tearing canvas. I scrambled upward.
Cave howled as I reached the front door. I heard him bounding up the stairs behind me.
The front screen unaccountably stuck in its jamb. I fought with it, dropping my ax. I turned to see Cave as he stepped into the front hallway. There was no longer anything recognizably human about him; his eyes were filled with blind hatred.
I desperately pushed against the screen. He loped toward me on all fours, remarkably graceful. He leaped. I threw myself to the floor. He crashed over me through the screen door, knocking it and himself out onto the porch.
I fumbled for my ax, my hand finding the stock of Cave’s shotgun as Cave tumbled down the front steps into the sunlight.
His howls were of a different sort now, pained and angry. The light obviously bothered him. He turned his head up and stared into the sun. His eyes mirrored the sun’s color and intensity. Then his eyes locked onto mine. He leaped nimbly onto the porch and then at me.
I pulled the shotgun up, firing both barrels. Most of Cave’s chest exploded in an outward splash of blood and matted fur. He screeched, rolling over me to the floor. He began to lap voraciously at his own blood, thrusting his paws into what had been his chest and then bringing them hungrily to his mouth.
But the wound had been deep. He tried to rise but could not, and as he fell back he turned his head to me.
His eyes were dimming. But suddenly life flowed into them, thrust there by the force of Cave’s will, and he opened his mouth.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
He fell back and, after a moment, was still.
I rose, gathering my ax and Cave’s box of shotgun shells into my pack. Before I moved on, I went back to his cellar, to look at his paintings once more.
CHAPTER 12
The Visitant
Daylight is a precious thing. It was even more precious to me because when I ran out of it I had to be in a place that was safe. When I left Cave’s house it was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. I headed due west on Route 20, hoping to make Hopkinsville, the nearest town, by five or six.
Sunlight was precious, but, though this was December, it was also hot. I was now in true desert, and besides the occasional rogue cottonwood, live oak, or cool highway overpass (the first of these contained three neat piles of bones, and I spent an anxious few minutes checking every corner of the dark concrete tunnel for unfriendly inhabitants) there was little but open road. We had had late rains this year, and for a while purple sage, along with tiny desert flowers of orange, yellow and blue, kept me company. But even these gave up after I crossed the Valparto River, which, my overpass view confirmed, had turned to two sloping sandy banks sandwiching a trickle of silty water.
At two o’clock I rested in the shade of a roadside barbecue and smoker shack. A thorough inspection revealed one pile of bones and a crater hole only fifteen yards from the smoker. The smoker itself had been torn to bits—whatever had hung in there had been eaten, or destroyed in rage.
I emptied my canteen, refilling it with cold water from an outside pump. There was no canned food. The electricity was dead here, too; opening the refrigerator revealed a three-day-old spoil of brisket and sauce.
The shack was as hot as an oven, so I returned to the relative cool of the shade outside. I ate some of my cereal and drank some water. I estimated I would reach Hopkinsville by five at the latest. Sundown was at six or so. I would have plenty of time.
I topped my canteen from the well water and moved on.
I soon came across another car wreck, involving two flatbeds and two sedans. One of the truck’s headlights still glowed weakly.
No drivers, no bones. I found a Cabbage Patch doll sprawled fatly over the edge of the seat in one of the cars.
By three-thirty I began to curse the sun. What I really cursed was my own stupidity in not bringing suntan lotion. My first priority in Hopkinsville would be to break into a drugstore and supply myself with cold cream.
I wiped my brow with my sleeve and looked out into the desert.
Someone was following me.
There was a figure in the distance to my left. It was veiled in heat haze, about a mile or so away. It crouched when I stopped to look. I stared, and suddenly there was a cactus in pallid bloom where the figure had been.
I wiped my brow again, blinking at the cactus, but it remained a cactus.
I shook my head and walked on.
Almost immediately, I saw the figure again, melting out of the haze and pacing me. This time I kept walking.
I used what astronomers call averted vision, tracking the figure with the periphery of my sight, where the retinas are more sensitive.
If it was a cactus it was a walking cactus. It was following me steadily, at about a half-mile distance.
As I walked, I casually pulled out the shotgun and loaded it, then slipped it loosely back into my pack. The figure did not slow, attempt to edge behind me, or slew toward me. It was content to follow on a parallel course.
I came upon an abandoned school bus, surrounded by piles of blood-licked bones. It was empty, the door eerily open in dead invitation.
I walked; my specter companion walked.
At a little after four-thirty, Hopkinsville rose into hazy view. There was not much to rise; one three-story office building, a couple of gas stations, a small hotel, a few bars and grocery stores, and whatever else a town of seven hundred perched on the desert needs. There was a McDonald’s, of course.
In studying the skyline of the town I had taken my eyes from my silent companion. When I looked for him he had disappeared.
A hard knot tied itself in my stomach. As I walked, I kept my right hand near the stock of the shotgun.
