of the boat again and ran up to the garage, returning a moment later with an extra tank. By the time he had it stowed under the bench of the dory, the engine on the Bayliner was already rumbling softly. “I’ll meet you at the Andersons’,” Michael called as his father cast the cruiser off and moved out into the center of the channel.
“We’ll wait,” Craig replied, letting the engine idle until Michael had started the outboard and maneuvered the dory away from the dock.
Five minutes later, after two more boats had joined them from other branches of the canal, they pulled up to Carl Anderson’s dock and rafted their boats onto the three that were already there.
Inside the house, Tim Kitteridge was organizing the search, while Mary Anderson, her face pallid and her eyes rimmed with red, sat silently on the couch. She seemed unaware of what was happening, but as Barbara approached her, she came out of her reverie and stood up. “Thanks for coming,” she said softly. “You were right — I think I would have gone crazy if I’d had to wait here by myself.” Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears. “I’m scared, Barbara. I’m so scared.”
Barbara slipped her arms around the other woman. “It’s going to be all right,” she assured Mary. “They’ll find her.” But as she listened to the men talking among themselves, she wondered.
“If she doesn’t go far, we have a chance,” Billy-Joe Hawkins said. “But I don’t know — it’s dangerous enough hiking in there in broad daylight, when you can at least see where you’re goin’. At night …” His voice trailed off among murmurs of agreement.
At last they were ready. Ted Anderson would accompany Tim Kitteridge in the squad car to the place where Kelly had taken off. The rest of the men would go in boats, rendezvousing at the footbridge Kelly had crossed, then spread out from there, forming a loose net that would move out into the dark wilderness.
But even as they left, Barbara had the distinct feeling that the few of them who knew the swamp well, who had spent much of their lives exploring it and working in it, were feeling far less than optimistic about the search.
They knew the dangers of the marshy wilderness all too well.
• • •
Judd Duval glanced at his image in the mirror, seeing the deep wrinkles in his face and the collapsing of the tissue around his mouth. Thank God his mind had still been working when Kitteridge had called him a few minutes ago. If Kitteridge saw him like this—
But he’d thought fast, and the answer had come to him. “I’m startin’ now,” he’d said. “She can’t be far from where she went in, and I know every one of them bayous. If’n I’m lucky, I’ll have her home before you’re even ready to start.”
He had no intention of going into the swamp tonight — no intention of letting anyone see him until he’d found a way to get another shot from Dr. Phillips. So he left the house, but instead of taking his boat out to search for Kelly Anderson, he moved it only a hundred yards from his cabin, carefully hiding it deep within a tangle of reeds and mangrove. In the daylight it might be seen by someone passing this way, but in the darkness it was completely invisible.
Satisfied, he began making his way back to the house, slogging through the shallow water and mud.
Once again he felt eyes watching him as he made his way through the marsh.
The first tendrils of panic reached out to him, but he fought them off. He stopped, searching in the darkness for the evil presence that he sensed close by.
There was nothing.
And yet his fear only increased.
He tried to run, but the muck on the bottom clung to his feet, and his already weakening muscles began to tire.
No! he told himself. Ain’t nothin’ out here! Nothin’!
But he didn’t believe his own words, and by the time he finally got back to the cabin, he was exhausted from fear as well as exertion. He dropped into his chair, his chest heaving and his breath coming in ragged gasps, terrified that his heart was about to fail him.
Slowly, though, he began to regain strength. He forced himself back to his feet, moving around the room, putting out all the lights and turning off the television.
If Kitteridge and the others came this way, the house had to look empty.
In darkness, he stripped off his filthy clothes and put on clean ones.
The waiting began.
Sitting alone in the dark was almost worse than being out in the swamp, for he dared not even turn on the radio to keep him company.
He began to lose his sense of time. As the minutes stretched into eternities, he imagined that dawn must already be at hand.
He began to see faces at the windows — children’s faces, all of them looking like Jonas Cox, staring at him with dead, empty eyes.
When at last he heard the low puttering of an outboard motor, his first instinct was to throw open the door and call out to whoever Was approaching. But the frightening image of his own aging face rose out of the darkness, and he resisted the impulse, cowering silently in the darkness, waiting for the flotilla of small boats to pass.
At last the murmuring of the engines faded away and the lights of the boats were swallowed up into the night.
Judd stirred, wondering what to do next.
And then it came to him — they’d been there, all of them, and seen his dark cabin, seen that his boat was not there. They thought he was in the swamp, searching, and they wouldn’t be back this way.
Not for hours; perhaps not until morning.
He changed clothes again, pulling the mud-encrusted pants back on, and, taking his gun with him this time, crept back onto the porch.
He could still feel the children out there, watching him, waiting for him.
He told himself it was crazy, that if they were there, the search party would have seen them.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
He knew the children of the swamp, knew them well. They moved through the wetlands anywhere they Wanted to go, invisible unless they wanted to be seen.
He paused on the porch, his eyes darting around, searching.
Nothing.
At last he lowered himself onto the porch floor, then slipped into the water. It came up to his hips, and his feet, bare now, sank into the mud. Slime oozed up between his toes, and thick grasses swirled around his ankles. Clutching his gun, its safety already released, he moved slowly away from the house, feeling his way back toward the mangrove thicket.
Now he imagined he saw eyes everywhere. They seemed to be in the trees, looking down at him from the branches that stretched out toward him like skeletal arms.
They were in the water, staring up at him from the depths. He saw George Coulton, lying on his back, gazing blankly upward, a gaping wound torn in his breast.
The memory made him shudder, and he tried to move faster, but the waters themselves seemed to be grasping at him now, and he felt as though in the grip of a nightmare.
He came at last to the mangrove thicket and hauled himself into the boat, his chest pounding, his breathing ragged. He fell back, resting against the gunwale, and waited for the exhaustion to pass. At last he pulled himself up onto the bench, untied the line from the mangrove root to which it was secured, and slipped the oars into the locks. Dipping the oars into the water, he slipped the boat out of the thicket.
And froze.
No more than ten feet away a silent figure sat in another rowboat, staring at him.
Pale eyes seemed to glow in the darkness.
Jonas.
He released the oars and reached for his gun, which lay on the bench beside him. But as his fingers closed on its grip, a low, hollow laugh drifted across the water from the other boat.
“Cain’t kill me, Judd,” Jonas said softly, but with a terrible clarity that rang in Judd Duval’s ears. “Remember?
