Yet no matter where he looked, he saw nothing.
Nothing except the moss-laden trees, the twisting vines, the black impenetrable water.
And the creatures.
Water moccasins slithered silently through the waterways, leaving only the faintest ripples behind them, and the ever-present alligators and crocodiles basked in the mud, their cold, glittering eyes seeming to fix hungrily on him as he passed.
An hour ago he’d wound his way through the swamp rats’ scattered settlement, and found a difference there, too.
The houses had seemed deserted, with no women sitting on their porches, no children playing at their feet.
He’d seen no men mending their fishnets or patching their boats.
Yet he’d sensed their presence inside the houses, felt them watching him.
It was as if they knew something, were hiding from some unseen danger that, though invisible, lay like a palpable force over the wetlands this afternoon.
Now, as the light began to fade, Judd found himself staring at a small island that loomed ahead of him. A single dying pine tree rose up out of a thicket of undergrowth, its branches silhouetted against the reddening sky like beckoning arms. Judd slowed his boat, letting it drift forward on the slow-moving current until the prow scraped against the bottom.
Judd’s eyes left the tree, scanning the soft land along the shore line.
Reeds were broken, and footprints showed clearly in the mud.
Footprints that led toward the thicket around the soaring pine.
His heartbeat quickening, his sense of dread gathering around him like the cloak of darkness that was falling over the swamp, Judd got out of the boat and followed the tracks.
He came to the tangle of brush around the pine tree and paused, his skin prickling. Every nerve fiber within him sensed that something vile was hidden within those bushes.
A memory flashed into his mind, an image of the body in the swamp, to which Amelie Coulton had guided him.
He pushed the memory aside and thrust himself into the dense foliage, forcing the branches aside.
And saw Carl Anderson’s body, stretched out on its back, already crawling with insects. A vulture, perched on Carl’s face, one of his eyeballs clutched in its beak, screamed with indignation at the interruption of its feast, then leaped upward, its wings beating as it scrambled into the sky.
Judd stared at the carnage that had been Carl Anderson’s chest, torn open, congealing blood filling the cavity with a reddish brown ooze.
He gazed at the ruin of Carl’s face, the eyes torn from their now empty sockets, only a few remaining scraps of skin still clinging to the bones of the old man’s skull.
Knowing now the truth of the danger he sensed, Judd backed away, then turned and fled to the safety of his boat. Starting the engine, he pulled away from the island, the image of the defiled corpse still fresh in his mind.
He turned the boat homeward, intent only on reaching his cabin, where, perhaps, he could lock the doors and windows against the terrible fear that was building within him. But even as he left the island where Carl Anderson lay, his panic began to peak, for moving through the gathering darkness, there were boats.
Not boats filled with the other men who had come out with him to search for Carl Anderson’s body.
Boats filled with children.
Strange, silent children, their eyes staring straight ahead, as if they were following some invisible beacon that only they could see.
As they passed him, Judd Duval’s heart began to pound, and an icy knot of pure terror took form in his belly, spreading slowly outward, threatening to paralyze him.
Only when the last of the boats had finally passed did he start the engine of his own skiff and turn the other way, intent only on getting away from those mute, menacing children with their empty eyes.
• • •
Barbara Sheffield felt her frustration reaching the breaking point. All afternoon she had tried to convince Tim Kitteridge that he should be searching Warren Phillips’s office — his house — anyplace where they might be able to find proof of what she was certain he had done.
But the chief had been adamant. “I can’t do it, Mrs. Sheffield,” he’d told her only half an hour ago, with a patronizing tone of long-suffering forbearance in his voice that had made Barbara want to slap him. “Right now I have other things to worry about. According to your own son, there’s a body somewhere in the swamp, and now we’ve got those two kids missing as well. When we’ve taken care of that, I’ll start looking into Warren Phillips.”
What he hadn’t told her was that he also had nothing with which to justify a search of Warren Phillips’s premises. Until he’d had an expert study the birth certificates that Barbara and Craig Sheffield claimed were forged — and who might give him some evidence that Phillips had been the forger — he couldn’t even go to a judge for a search warrant. And despite the pleas of the Sheffields, he wasn’t about to commit himself to an illegal search of anything. That, he was certain, would leave him defending himself against a lawsuit for the rest of his career.
But when Carl Anderson’s body was found, it might be a different story. For if Carl looked as Kelly and Michael — and even Carl’s own son — said he did, Kitteridge would have sufficient reason to talk to Phillips about what condition he might have been treating Carl for, and what drugs he had administered. But until the body was found, he had only secondhand impressions of Carl’s condition.
“Does he really expect us just to wait here?” Barbara demanded of Craig as night began to gather over the swamp.
Craig, no less frustrated than his wife, sighed heavily. “I wish I could tell you there’s something else we can do, but he’s right. What we think we know just doesn’t matter, honey. Not to the law. He’s only protecting himself, and if it weren’t our own children involved, I’d have to agree with him. Two empty crypts and a couple of birth certificates we don’t think are real just isn’t enough. But when Carl Anderson’s body turns up—”
Craig Sheffield could only shrug helplessly. But if another hour passed and the searchers had still turned up nothing, then despite the objections of Tim Kitteridge, he and Ted Anderson intended to join the search.
Not that they had much hope of finding anything — the memory of his last search of the swamp was still all too fresh for him to delude himself about that — but at least he would be doing something.
And doing something, at this point, would be better than waiting.
Waiting and wondering.
• • •
Michael rose from the sagging sofa and went to the door.
Though it was dark out now, he couldn’t remember the sunset at all. Indeed, the afternoon seemed to have disappeared, passing without a trace, as Clarey’s silent song had filled his mind.
But this time — unlike those days and nights in the swamp when he’d lost track of time, and been left with nothing more than empty gaps of hours gone from his life — he knew what had happened.
The memories were sharp and clear.
Once more he’d seen the man who until today had come to him only in his dreams, or haunted him in the mirror as he gazed at his own image.
But now he understood that it was not just one man he’d seen, but many.
Every man who had partaken of his youth had been in those dreams, but the visions he had seen of them since he was a child were as they truly were, stripped of their masks of stolen youth.
Old men, ravaged not only by time, but by the evil that had consumed them, preserving their bodies even as it rotted their souls.
This afternoon he had seen them again, and this time he’d seen them for what they were, recognized clearly the corruption within them.
But today he felt no fear of them. Indeed, he felt their own fear, sensed their terror, saw them cowering away from him, knowing he was there, knowing what he intended to do.
