And knowing they had nothing left of their own with which to defend themselves.
In each of them he had recognized tiny fragments of his own being, fragments that had reposed within them for years, waiting for him to claim them. And now the time was at hand.
Turning away from the darkness outside, Michael went back into Clarey’s house.
The old woman’s eyes opened. It was fully dark now, and she lifted herself out of her chair, feeling once more the stiffness of her years. With trembling fingers she struck a match and lit the wick of the oil lamp on the table. A soft glow of light diffused the darkness of the room, and Jonas Cox, dozing on the sofa next to Kelly Anderson, stirred at the sudden light. Clarey went to the stove, opening the door to poke at the embers glowing within, and added a couple of sticks of wood from the pile on the floor next to the stove, then put a kettle of water on the burner. As the water heated, and she added coffee grounds to the kettle, she turned to the three teenagers, who were watching her uncertainly.
Kelly still sat on the sofa, her face pale even in the warm lamplight, her eyes expressionless.
Next to her was Jonas Cox, fully awake new, his body as tense as a ferret’s, ready to dart away at the first hint of danger.
Michael was near the door, and as Clarey’s ancient eyes fixed on him, she could see the difference in him, the change that had taken place inside him when he’d come to her, and since then, during the long hours of her summoning of the Circle.
“They be comin’ now,” she said, knowing he would understand her words. “The children be comin’. They be nearby.”
She went back to the stove and poured the steaming brew from the kettle into four cups, handing one of them to each of the children. As if they knew that the night ahead might be long, they drained the thick mugs of the bitter liquid and felt its heat spread through their bodies.
At last, when the kettle on the stove was empty, Clarey turned the lamp so that the wick burned low, leaving nothing more than a faint glow to soften the shadows in the corners of the room.
“It be time,” she said.
She went out to the porch, then waited while first Kelly and then Jonas Cox climbed into the waiting boat. Finally Michael helped her down the ladder, and she carefully seated herself in the small skiff.
As Jonas Cox dipped the oars into the water, Michael cast loose the line and stepped into the boat. It drifted out into the quiet lagoon.
The moon began to rise as the skiff moved slowly across the water, disappearing at last into the twisting channels, joining the flotilla that was already silently converging on the small island on which stood an altar in the center of a clearing.
• • •
Clarey Lambert watched the candles on the altar. They burned bright, their flames steady in the stillness of the night. She was alone now, the Circle of children departed, following Michael as he led them through the darkness.
She knew where they were going and what they were going to do, but she chose not to think about it. Rather, she preferred to sit by herself, close to the glowing embers of the bonfire, feeling its warmth penetrate the chill in her ancient bones in a way that the heat from the sun never could.
Tonight, she knew, was the night she would die.
But not yet.
Not until the last of the candles went out, not until the eyes of the dolls on the altar flooded with tears and she knew that all the children were whole again.
Only then would she let go of the life within her, the life she had clung to with a will that defied the vows of the Dark Man, who had sworn to live forever.
Clarey Lambert would outlive him, and laugh at him when she met him beyond the grave.
Tonight was a night she had long dreamed of, long prayed for. In her dreams she had always been there to watch the Dark Man die, watch him suffer as he had made the children suffer. But tonight, when at last the time had come, she found her hatred of him draining away, replaced by a pity she didn’t quite understand.
So she had stayed by herself on the island, content to tend the fire, certain in her own mind that when the time came for the Dark Man to die, she would know about it.
Just as she would know when each of the children regained his soul.
A faint sound drifted to Clarey’s ears, interrupting her reverie.
Barely audible at first, it slowly rose above the steady drone of the tiny night creatures until it filled the night with a scream of pent-up rage, a rising wall of sound that swept across the swamp, finally culminating in a shriek of anguish that shook Clarey’s body like a physical blow.
The end, Clarey knew, was finally beginning.
30
Fred Childress had left the mortuary immediately after calling Warren Phillips. He’d gone home to the empty house he’d lived alone in ever since his wife had died fifteen years ago. All afternoon he’d paced nervously around the house, every instinct in him telling him to pack a few clothes into a suitcase and drive away from Villejeune.
But he knew he couldn’t, for if he left Villejeune, he would also leave Warren Phillips and the magic injections that had kept him young for nearly twenty years.
Without the injections …
He put the thought out of his mind, remembering the sight of George Coulton’s body when he’d taken it from the morgue to inter in one of the crypts in the cemetery.
“That’s you, Fred,” Warren Phillips had told him. “That’s you, without the shots I give you.”
Fred Childress had said nothing, but for the first time he’d truly understood what would happen to him without Warren Phillips. So he wouldn’t leave town. He would do as Phillips had told him, saying nothing, admitting nothing about the empty tombs in the Sheffields’ mausoleum.
And it would be all right.
Warren Phillips would take care of him — him, and Orrin Hatfield, and Judd Duval, all of them — just as he had for nearly two decades.
But as night began to fall, he’d grown increasingly nervous. His skin had begun to crawl, as if thousands of ants were creeping over his body, and he’d begun to imagine that he heard sounds outside in the night.
Sounds of children, coming out of the darkness, creeping up from the depths of the swamp, surrounding his house.
Watching him through his uncurtained windows.
He scurried around the house, turning off all the lights, and then sat in the darkness, telling himself that he was only imagining the demons that filled the night.
And then he heard the howling outside the door.
He froze, fear drying his mouth and clutching at his belly.
The howl came again, rising out of the marshes, reaching out to him, and Fred Childress, unable to resist the keening in the night, moved toward the door.
Against his will, he opened it.
He saw nothing for a split second, but then there was movement in the darkness, shadows beginning to move out of the pine trees.
Fred Childress’s heart began to pound once more as he saw the children emerge from the trees.
There were five of them, two of whom Fred recognized.
Quint and Tammy-Jo Millard, their hands intertwined, stopped at the bottom of the steps to his porch, gazing up at him.
Their empty eyes glittered coldly in the moonlight.
As the other three children joined them, and Fred Childress’s fear blossomed into panic, he felt a white-hot
