“No!”
“’Thena, please, just one chance, that’s all I ask.”
“Can’t you see? All you have to do is look at him.” She wiped the boy’s forehead with a damp cloth. He’d been uncontrollable all day, thrashing, convulsing, screaming wildly whenever they’d tried to move him. Finally they’d given up, afraid to touch him. At last, he seemed calmer.
Steve’s gaze drifted to the boy, and he shuddered, recognizing the sickly gathering lump in his stomach as fear. All along, she’d been right, he knew. It was the boy. Somehow he’d always been the center of it.
Matty’s face looked pallid and swollen, and the thick-lidded eyes seemed to stare inward. Perspiration oozed down him, and he shivered, periodically calling out in short, chattering sentences. “…coming…hurt-dark…”
“Help me throw some things in a suitcase. Or don’t you believe me?” She confronted him. “Even now, don’t you believe it’s out there? Don’t you believe it’s coming here to night?”
“I believe. That’s why I’m asking you to let me do this.”
“We have to go now. Leave the house.” Determinedly, she marched across the room, then suddenly looked around instead, all her urgency bleeding away in small irresolute gestures. “Did I ever tell you how I met Wallace?”
He tried to smile for her. “No.”
“My senior year at City College, my scholarship didn’t cover everything, and I had to work after school on campus, and I was running late one night, so I cut through the park, running for my train. And there he was, looking lost, and so handsome in that uniform.” She never turned toward him, but spoke as though to the room itself, to the house. “He was stationed at Fort Dix then. He and his friends had come into the city on leave.” She laughed. “He’d gotten separated from them, had no idea where he was. I swear, we stared right in each other’s eyes, and of course I dropped all my books. He helped me pick them up, and then I didn’t care that I was late. He looked so shy, that smile. A natural gentleman, my grandmother would have said. My aunt practically screamed the place down because he was white. I left that night.”
“’Thena…”
“All those years, I wouldn’t run because Wallace loved this place, and because I wouldn’t be beaten, and because I really felt Matty would be, I don’t know, safer here somehow.” She clung to the twitching boy. “Look at him. He’s been waiting for it all day.” Her eyes probed every corner of the room. “This place…it’s all we have.” Finally, she faced him. “It’ll start to get dark soon.”
“’Thena, one last time, I’m going to ask you to let me do this. Please, just hear me out. I promise there’ll be no danger to you or the boy.”
“Why do you go on with this?”
“You just said it yourself—it’s almost dark. How far do you think we could get? Would you rather be caught out there?” He took a deep breath. “Yesterday in the woods, I ran in a blind panic from something I couldn’t see.” He watched disbelief grow on her face. “Do you understand? When Anna got sick, I should’ve helped her face it, but I ran away, dragged her out here with me, as though we could escape it. I don’t want to run all my life.”
“I can’t believe this. Dear God! I can’t believe you want to stay.”
“This thing—whatever it is—it killed Barry. Don’t you understand? It got my partner.” He glanced at the boy. “And there’s something else, something I can’t even put into words. I have this feeling that, if we try to run now, we’ll never be free of it. I want to nail it, ’Thena. Just give me one chance to kill it. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll go. I promise.”
She looked at him a long time. “Tell me.”
“I want you to keep a gun and lock yourself and the boy in the house.”
“And where will you be?”
“Outside. Hiding. With a rifle. Because it is going to come for the boy. No matter where we go.”
“You feel that?” In a corner, the sleeping dog jerked, and she started at the movement. “Where’s the rifle?” She stroked the boy’s hair.
“In the car.”
“Get it.”
Without speaking, he left the kitchen.
“One hour, Steve!” she called after him. “We’ll wait one hour. Then we go.”
He stomped across the porch and headed around the side of the house. The screen door didn’t slam behind him, because the dog had followed, moving warily, tail stiff. “Good boy, Dooley,” he muttered distractedly. In front of the house, the stone fragments of the driveway slid and crunched beneath his heavy tread. When he took the Remington automatic from the backseat of the Volkswagen, the dog whined eagerly. “What’s the matter, boy? You want to go hunting?” He put the extra box of shells in his pocket, then scratched the broad head. “Shape you’re in, doggy, I’d lay odds on the jackrabbits. But when all this is over, we’ll go hunting. I promise.” Dooley licked his hand and then, twitching toward the woods, began to growl softly.
He turned, weighing the rifle in his hands: the creek lay in that direction, and the town. He stood deliberating. That night in the storm, maybe Athena only saw that poor lunatic the troopers killed. Maybe the footprints he saw could have been…something else.
A hot breeze stirred, and he heard the strange keening. It was there. It was coming.
He glanced at the bristling animal beside him. Even the dog knew. He turned his gaze upward. The sky had begun to dim, and the wind blew stronger.
He hurried back to the house. When he pulled open the door, she spun around with a small cry. He put the rifle on the table, and for a moment, she leaned against him.
“I opened another can of soup. Are you hungry?”
“No.” His gaze traveled to the boy. “No, thanks. Matty’s feeling better?”
“A little, I think.”
At the table, the boy just sat quietly. Steve placed a big hand on his shoulder. “Pal? You okay now?” Slowly, the boy looked up with something coiled in his eyes. Steve backed away. “I guess I’ll get ready.”
“It’s not quite dark yet, is it? I’m only taking one suitcase. We can come back for the rest. If only Matty hadn’t been so sick all day, we could’ve left earlier. We should have anyway.” She brought a hand to her face. “I have to stop talking so fast. One hour after it gets dark, we’re getting out of here. I mean it, Steve.”
“’Thena…”
“One hour. I don’t know why I’m even…”
The child moaned, and his mother moved quickly to him. He pushed away and groaned again, doubling over. “…my friend…no, don’t do that please don’t…red coming out…help me…save…”
“Matty? What hurts?”
He groaned loudly, beginning to choke. Steve gently held his head while undigested vegetable soup spattered on the floorboards. The boy spat a couple of times and continued to heave with nothing coming out. His nose ran, his eyes watered.
“That’s a boy. Get it all out now.” Steve rubbed his back. “Everything’s going to be okay now. ’Thena, why don’t you get him a glass of water? You’re okay, Matty. Nothing to worry about. Want me to take you upstairs and get you cleaned up?” He used his handkerchief to wipe the boy’s mouth. “Don’t cry. You feel better now?” He reached for the glass of water and got the boy to drink, talking to him all the while and patting him.
She stood back, a thin smile playing across her lips, and listened to the soothing rumble of his voice. “You’re good with him.”
The boy stopped trembling and wiped his tears. He sat up straight in the chair, and his face grew calm.
Unnaturally calm, thought Steve. “That’s a boy now. Take it easy. Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll take care of it. You just…’Thena? ’Thena, what’s wrong with him?”
The boy stared with empty eyes. His breath evened out, grew fainter, became almost undetectable.
