Little Mack was scared.
He heard the noises in the trailer and didn't want to go inside, even though the door was open. The truck with the big tires wasn't here, so maybe that mean, skinny man wasn't with his Mommy. But somebody was in there. And it sounded like a whole lot of somebodies.
He ducked down by the steps and looked into the living room. He couldn't see because his eyes were full of sun. But he heard people moaning like the ghosts did in those scary movies that Junior made him watch when Mommy was out late at night. Or else when she and Daddy went to bed early and Junior turned the television up real loud.
He wished, wished, wished Daddy was home, but Daddy didn't come home much these days. Little Mack thought it might have something to do with the skinny man. Little Mack didn't like the skinny man, even though the man fluffed Mack's hair and gave him a nickel once. Mack didn't like him because he smelled like those green pellets that the janitor put on the floor when some kid threw up at school.
He didn't see the skinny man and he didn't see Mommy, but he heard people moving around in the back of the trailer. He almost yelled for Mommy but all of a sudden he was afraid, because he saw the one-eyed old man from next door who looked like he was two hundred years old, except right now he looked like he was four hundred, because his skin was the color of art paste and something that looked like rubber cement poured out of his nose and mouth.
And the eye that didn't have a patch moved funny, like it couldn't see anything but still wanted to look.
The old man tried to stand, but his legs didn't work right. He rolled over on the floor and he must have seen Little Mack, because he smiled real funny. Smiling like he had a secret. A bad secret.
Little Mack turned and ran, hoping that his Mommy wasn't in there with that bad man, that she wasn't part of the secret. He ran into the woods where he always hid, ducking under the blackberry briars and clamping his hands over his ears because he didn't want to hear the scary things that were in his head. He was afraid that the dark might get here before the scary things left.
He hoped Daddy would come home soon and make everything all right again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tamara turned up the old dirt road and started to climb the winding grade. The Toyota's engine whined in protest as she downshifted. The steep slopes of Bear Claw rose before her, taunting her, solid and ancient. The car juddered as it fought over the ruts and granite humps.
This was the mountain in her dream. And she trusted her dream. If she didn't trust her dream, something bad might happen. Or something bad might happen no matter what she did.
The Gloomies are up there somewhere, not in my head this time. They're real. They're here.
She considered turning back, running away from the thing that had haunted her for the past few days, the feelings that had gripped her heart, the unease that lingered in the base of her skull like a hibernating snake. But she knew these Gloomies were different. They wouldn't let her hide. They had secret spy lights.
They wouldn't be satisfied until they had her. And she wouldn't be satisfied until she had faced the enemy.
Because, in the dream, it had taken her family.
The Gloomies had already taken her father.
No way in hell would she lose anyone else.
Chester leaned against a locust tree and waited for DeWalt to catch up. DeWalt was slowing him down plenty, even more than the age and arthritis and fear that had leadened his legs. Twenty years ago, Chester would have covered twice as much territory in the last hour. But, twenty years ago, he hadn't been looking for neon-eyed freaks or strange green lights.
He glanced up at the treetops as he fumbled for a refresher hunk of Beechnut. The trees looked like October witches, with long arms and sharp elbows and dark skirts. He could hear himself wheezing through his nose. He was glad he had never taken up smoking. Maybe that was what was causing his Yankee sidekick's ass dragging.
Chester looked down the slope at DeWalt, whose face was plum colored and whose jawbone was hanging like an over-chased fox's. DeWalt's eyes were fixed on the ground as he stepped over stumps and fallen logs, shuffling over the brown carpet of leaves as if his high-dollar boots were filled with mud.
A lonely crow swooped over, landing in the top of an old sycamore tree. The bird cawed a couple of times, and the sound was swallowed by the sickly blooming treetops. Chester worked his fresh tobacco into the old, enjoying the sting of nicotine against his gums. The moonshine jar in his pocket was half empty. He thought about taking a swig but decided against it.
Hell, must be getting religion or something. Next thing you know, I'll be blaming the devil for what happened to old Don Oscar. Maybe the easy answer is the best. Then at least it would all be God’s fault and the rest of us could go on home.
He swiveled his head, looking around the ridge. They were getting close to Don Oscar's property. If there were green lights, they should be able to see them from this rise. The sun was just now falling into the fingers of the trees and would soon crawl behind the mountains and die for the day. Chester was reconsidering his newfound abstinence when he first saw the opening.
'Well, I'll be dee-double-dipped in dog shit,' he muttered. Then, loud enough for DeWalt to hear, he called through the trees.
'What's that… Chester? Did you… say something?' DeWalt yelled, between gasps.
'Get your flatlander ass up here and pinch me. Just so's I can be sure I'm not dreaming.'
'Coming… you flannel-wearing… bastard,' DeWalt said, breaking into a tortured trot. 'Don't.. let your long johns… ride up your rump.”
Chester's thumb trembled on the twin hammers of the twenty-gauge. Not that buckshot would do a whole hell of a lot against that.
Then DeWalt was at his side, saying 'Good God' in a hoarse, weak voice.
'It ain't nothing to do with God,” Chester said. “More like the garden gate to hell, if you ask me.'
Below them, in an outcrop of mossy granite boulders, the light radiated green, fuzzy, and dismal. Chester thought it looked like the bonus light on that pinball machine down at the GasNGo over on Caney Fork. You had to knock a ball into the caved-out belly button of a painted Vegas showgirl to get the bonus. But this light looked like the jackpot for a game that had no score.
There must have been a springhead in the rocks, because a sluggish trickle of fluid roped down the gully. But it was no clean, pure mountain stream. It sparkled like rancid grapes, as if only part of the light were reflected, and the rest was swallowed and absorbed into the oozing green tongue that wound its way through the trees toward Stony Creek. The mud of the gully banks was veined with stringy white roots, as if a thousand giant spiders had spun sick webs.
The trees that bordered the outcrop were stunted and gnarled, darkened as if lightning-struck. Chester had the fleeting notion that they had grown heads and had bent low to eat their own trunks. No animals stirred in the heavy, still air of the ridge slope. It was almost as if the source of the green light had swallowed the atoms of the atmosphere.
Swallowed was the word that came to mind, because the thing definitely gave Chester the impression of a mouth. It was a grotto, a jagged opening under the rocks. Soil was spilled around the edge of the opening as if around a woodchuck's hole. Chester could clearly see inside the grotto because the fluorescence was coming from somewhere within the earthen throat.
Along the walls of the cave, which angled downward toward the base of the mountain, yellowish tendrils and umbels dangled like tiny slick stalactites, as long as arms. They writhed and curled like eyeless maggots searching for dead food.
The mouth of the grotto was large enough to hold a dozen people. Paste-colored stones huddled inside like
