was far beneath it, and here he could still maneuver.
“Look!” Martin pointed to what appeared to be a star in the vault of the space. At that same instant something rushed past beneath his feet. He looked down in time to see scales, iridescent purple in the blue light, but then the thing was gone.
An instant later Mike screamed as coils surged up around him.
Al North saw all this with the clarity—and, indeed, the peace—of somebody who had accepted his life in full, and was prepared to pay the debt he had incurred. He understood the secret of hell, that souls who go there forfeit their right to be. They no longer have a place in this universe or any universe, not until time ends, and a new idea comes to replace the one that is the present creation.
And then, maybe.
He who had done evil accepted the rightness of this.
Still, he wanted to repair what he could, and there was something he could do here. They had all forgotten, in their terror, to just let themselves happen, to trust the grace that was immediately and always ready to support them. He forgave them. He hoped for them.
Which was a very great thing, that he could surmount his anger and his disappointment and his arrogance long enough to do that one tiny thing, to feel hope.
It seemed small, but the energy of such an act on the part of a lost soul is huge, and the tiny spark of goodness that was still within him was easily enough to open ten million soul traps in one flashing, electric instant.
A roar of voices burst out, the faint blue light became a million times brighter. Memories, thoughts, pleas, cries of relief—a huge, gushing roar of human surprise and joy—flew at Martin and his little band in the form of pictures of happy moments, loving in the covers, running by the sea, leaves whirling in autumn, Christmas tree lights, girls dancing, men in blue water, hamburgers, the faces of happy dogs, and song in a million verses of hallelujah.
In this mass, a thousand great serpents came screaming up from the depths of the place and down from the shuddering gateways, their bodies burning from the goodness around them that they could not bear, and they flew into the air like great pillars of fire, writhing and screaming in the sea of song.
They were another design like the outriders and the nighthawks, especially fashioned to terrify human beings, but they had been unleashed too late to save Samson’s wealth. No doubt, the huge snakes were a rental, and he hadn’t wanted to spend the money unless he had to.
The song ended. The hot bones of the serpents tumbled down through the ruined masses of shattered tubes. The gateways shimmered and went out.
Samson’s enormous cry of rage echoed, faded, and died away. He dropped to a stool in his simple room, his narrow head bowed. Outside, the city roared. Another revolution, another aristocracy burned, and now this, his fortune lost.
So it went, in the unsettled misery of this age.
Unnoticed by the raging crowds, the hour of midnight had passed. The weak had won the day.
With a quick swipe of his hand across his face, Samson shifted into his human form. Outside, torches flared. Feet pounded on the stairs, fists pounded on his door.
He stepped through his quickly closing gateway, but not into his old world, not into Martin’s world. He had a plan. If there was vengeance to be tasted, he intended to drink deep.
“Dad, he’s in our woods!”
They got their shotguns and took off after him, both of them, and Brooke and Kelsey agreed that they’d gone mad.
The woods, though, were empty. From along the ridge above the house, they could see the lights of Harrow. Faintly, one of the church bells sounded. Snow was falling, whispering in the woods, drawing pale lines along the dark branches of the winter trees. The peace here was so deep that it seemed impossible that Samson could have passed this way.
They went back to the house, the two of them. They lingered on the deck.
“The Belt of Orion,” Wylie said, gazing up as the snow clouds made a window for the stars.
“And his bow,” Nick said, pointing.
“You did good, Nick.”
“Thanks, Dad. Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Is it real? The book?”
“I thought Samson was in our woods. But he wasn’t.”
They went inside, then, and made a fire for the girls. Popcorn was popped, and hot chocolate produced, and Wylie even managed to slip a goodly shot of whiskey into his.
They spent the remainder of this quiet night speaking of the things of ordinary life. “Past midnight,” Nick said. “I think we won.”
Nothing more was said, and after a time, Nick played cards with Kelsey and Wylie, and Brooke broke out the celebration cognac, a hundred-year-old bottle that was sipped at moments of victory.
Tomorrow, Christmas vacation began for the kids, and in the very late hours, Wylie went into his wife’s arms for what felt like the first time in an age.
At breakfast, the radio said, “The world ended last night, but it seems that nobody noticed. New Age gurus from China to Scotland stood on mountaintops and chanted, but guess what, Chicken Little stayed home. We are now living on the first day beyond the end of the ancient Mayan calendar, a date that has no number in their measurement. But then again, they went extinct a long time ago.”
Later in the morning, Nick found boot prints back in the woods, where Samson’s gateway had been.
“Could’ve been left by us,” Wylie told him.
“I was wearing sneakers when we came out here. You had on a sock. One sock.”
“I went out in the woods without shoes? In the dead of winter?”
Nick nodded. “We did not make these tracks, Dad.”
They’d put a throw rug over the bullet holes in the floor above the crawl space, and they both looked at it at the same time, and for the same reason. It was now gone and the floor was unmarked.
“Brooke, what about that little rug in the kitchen?”
“I put that horror back in the mudroom where it belongs and leave it there please. In the future, if you want to rearrange my house, submit your request in writing.”
“Dad, it was all real! It happened! And we’re—” He stopped. Frowned a little, shook his head. “I lost it,” he said. “It was right on the tip of my tongue.”
Wylie called Matt, but nobody had reported anybody strange wandering around in Harrow, or anywhere in Lautner County, for that matter.
“What about the body in my crawl space? Is that resolved?”
“You want me to come out there with a net?”
“I thought you were gonna arrest me.”
There was a silence. Then, “Oh, yeah, you’ve got that absinthe, not to mention the cigar theft issue.”
He had no memory whatsoever of Al North, then.
They talked, then, about the state of the pheasant population, which was excellent. “Matt wants to hunt tomorrow,” Wylie called to Nick, “you game?”
Nick looked at him. “He doesn’t remember a thing, does he?”
“You want to go or not?”
“’Course I do.”
Wylie made plans to meet with Matt before dawn, and go to some of the walk—in land over in Smith County. “You sure there’s been nothing odd, Matt? No cars stolen around here, say?”
“In your neck of the woods? There hasn’t been any crime of any kind over there at all, ever. What the hell’s the matter with you today, anyway? Is this some new insanity? I don’t hunt with crazy people.”
“Read me the blotter for last night.”
“The blotter?”
“Look, it’s not gonna kill you, now read the damn thing!”
