The Voice of the Night

Roy cried out in agony. The shock of the impact had been transmitted through the tire iron, into his flesh. He gripped one stinging hand with the other and swore at the top of his voice.

Colin took advantage of Roy’s brief incapacitation and got the hell out of there.

24

The interior of the Chevrolet stank. There were quite a few distinctly different, unpleasant odors, and Colin was able to imagine the source of some of them, although not all. Old grease alive with mold. Damp upholstery laced with mildew. Rotting carpet. But one of the smells that he could not identify was the strongest of them all: an odd fragrance like cooking ham, sweet one moment but rancid the next. It made him wonder if there was a dead animal in the car, a decaying squirrel or mouse or rat, festooned with writhing maggots, just inches away in the impenetrable dark. At times the image of an oozing corpse became so vivid in his mind that he gagged with revulsion, even though he knew the noise he made, small as it was, might draw Roy’s attention.

Colin was stretched out on the Chevrolet’s musty back seat, on his right side, facing front, knees drawn up a bit, arms against his chest, fetal, afraid, sweating yet shivering, seeking safety in the deep shadows but uncomfortably aware that there was no real security to be found in this place. The car’s rear window and two rear side windows were intact, but all the glass in front was gone. Now and again, a breeze eddied into the car, but it didn’t freshen the air; it only stirred the odors until they became thicker, even more pungent than they had been. He listened intently for any sound of Roy that the breeze might bring, but for a long time the junkyard was silent.

Night had come at last. On the western horizon, every trace of the sun had been blacked over. A fragment of the moon hung low in the east, but its light did not penetrate the interior of the automobile.

Lying in the darkness, Colin had nothing to do but think, and he could think of nothing but Roy. Colin could no longer resist the truth: This was not a game: Roy was really a killer. Roy would have pushed the truck down the hill. No doubt about it. He would have wrecked the train. He would have raped and killed Sarah Callahan if Colin hadn’t found holes in his plan. And, Colin thought, he would have cracked my head open with that tire iron if I hadn’t gotten away from him. There was not the slightest doubt about that either. The blood-brother oath no longer meant anything. Perhaps it never had. He supposed it was even possible that Roy had killed those two boys, just as he claimed he had: one pushed off the cliff at Sandman’s Cove, the other drenched with lighter fluid and set afire.

But why?

The truth was clear, but its origins were not. The truth made no sense to him, and that was frightening. The facts were all in plain sight; but the facts were the end product of a long manufacturing process, and the machinery that had made them could not be seen.

Questions tumbled through Colin’s mind. Why does Roy want to kill people? Does he get pleasure from it? What kind of pleasure, for God’s sake? Is he a lunatic? Why doesn’t he look like a lunatic if that’s what he is? Why does he look so normal? He asked himself those questions and a hundred others, but he had no answers.

Colin expected the world to be simple and straightforward. He liked to be able to divide it into two camps: forces for good and forces for evil. In that way every event and a problem and solution clearly had a black side and a white side, and you always knew exactly where you stood. He pretty much believed that the real world was like the land in The Lord of the Rings, with the blessed and the damned marshaled into two distinct armies. But no matter how hard he probed at it, regardless of the angle from which he considered it, Roy’s behavior over the past month could be labeled neither saintly nor entirely wicked. Roy had many qualities that Colin envied, admired, and wished to acquire; but Roy was also a cold-blooded murderer. Roy was not black. He was not white. He wasn’t even gray. He was a hundred, no, a thousandshades of gray, all whirling and blending and shifting together like a thousand columns of smoke. Colin could not reconcile his view of life with the sudden discovery of a creature like Roy. The endless ramifications of Roy’s quicksilver morality were frightening. It meant that Colin would have to reconsider everything in his cozy philosophy. All the people in his life would have to be taken out of the pigeonholes into which he had stuffed them. He would have to judge each of them again, more carefully than he had done before, and then he would have to put them… Put them where? If there was no black-and-white system, there were no pigeonholes either. If there was not always a clear division between right and wrong, people could not safely be labeled, slotted, and forgotten; and life would be unbearably difficult to manage.

Of course, Roy might be possessed.

As soon as that thought crossed Colin’s mind, he knew it was the answer, and he eagerly seized it. If Roy was possessed by an evil spirit, he was not responsible for the monstrous acts he committed. Roy himself was good, but the demon within him was evil. Yes! That was it! That explained the apparent contradiction. Possessed. Like the girl in The Exorcist. Or the little boy in The Omen. Or perhaps Roy was possessed by an alien, a thing from another planet, an entity that had traveled to earth from the far stars. Sure. That must be it. That was a better, more scientific, less superstitious explanation than the first. Not a demon, but an evil, alien being. Maybe it was similar to the villains in the old Don Siegel movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or even more likely, maybe the thing that had Roy under its power was a parasite from another galaxy like in that great Heinlein novel, The Puppet Masters. If that were the case, there were steps he must take at once, without a moment’s delay, while there was still a chance, however slim, to save the world. First of all, he had to find irrefutable proof of the invasion. Then he had to use that proof to convince other people that there was a clear and present danger. And finally he had to-

“Colin!”

He jerked, sat up, terrified, shaking. For a moment he was too shocked to get his breath.

“Hey, Colin!”

The sound of Roy calling his name snapped him back to reality.

“Colin, can you hear me?”

Roy was not close. At least a hundred yards away. Shouting.

Colin leaned toward the front seat, peered through the empty windshield frame, but he could not see anything. “Colin, I made a mistake.”

Colin waited.

“Do you hear me?” Roy said.

Colin didn’t respond.

“I did a very stupid thing,” Roy said.

Colin shook his head. He knew what was coming, and he was amazed that Roy would try anything so obvious.

“I carried the game too far,” Roy said.

It won’t work, Colin thought. You won’t convince me. Not now. Not any more.

“I guess I scared you more than I meant to,” Roy said “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Jeez,” Colin said softly, to himself.

“I didn’t really want to wreck the train.”

Colin stretched out on the seat once more, on his side, knees drawn up, down in the shadows that smelled of decay.

For a few minutes, Roy went through other verses of his siren song, but eventually he realized that Colin was not going to be entranced by it. Roy was unable to conceal his frustration. With each patently insincere exhortation, his voice grew increasingly strained. Finally he exploded: “You rotten little creep! I’ll find you. I’ll get my hands on you. I’m going to beat your fuckin’ head in, you little son-of-a-bitch! You traitor!”

Then silence.

The wind, of course.

And crickets, toads.

But not a peep from Roy.

The quiet was unnerving. Colin would have preferred to hear Roy cursing, bellowing, and crashing about the junkyard in search of him, for then he would have known where the enemy was.

As he listened for Roy, the sometimes sweet and sometimes rancid hamlike odor grew stronger than ever,