breath.
I rolled over. Stones bruised my back and thighs. Suddenly I was
staring into the enormous snapping mouth only inches away, spraying me
with spittle, sounds like shots from a pistol- and beneath it, that
immense ungodly roar. Casey screamed and the head jerked away from
me.
She'd used the pitchfork.
Two of the tines had entered its neck at the shoulder. She was strong
and she'd sunk them deep.
The body whipped around.
I saw where the rock had hit him. His back legs were dragging, as
useless as Casey's arm. I felt a savage flush of pleasure. We'd
broken him, skewered him. Casey held on.
The woman was on her feet and moving toward them.
I lunged at her, grabbed her by the legs and pulled her down. The legs
felt scaly in my hands, dry as leather. The woman whirled and shrieked
at me, pounding me with her hands. I saw her face. Eyes dark and
glittering. A crone's face, a Halloween mask, pointed, webbed and
shrill. Waves of foam spilling out of her toothless mouth, over her
chin. Her breath a reek of corpses.
Beside me the dog whipped side to side. And still Casey held the
pitchfork, leaning her weight into the handle, sinking it deeper.
Leaning in too far.
The dog screamed, dug in with his front paws and heaved. His shoulder
muscles rippled, his eyes tossed and rolled. I knew what he was going
to do. It was impossible but I saw it coming. I tried to warn her.
'Casey! Drop it!'
I reached for a rock. I pulled myself up over the woman until I
straddled her. Brittle claws broke off along my cheek. I felt the
blood
well up. I saw her dark eyes close a split second before I hit her.
The nose broke open. The cheekbones fell away at a strange, sunken
angle The legs kicked and trembled. I looked up.
The dog heaved.
The muscles in his neck were thick and hard as rigging. The pain must
have been amazing but there was nothing in him but a crazy meanness
now. I could see Casey's grip faltering on the pitchfork. The dog
lurched toward her, sinking it deeper. He got it into him good and
solid and then he jerked it away from her as though she were a child in
a bad match of tug-of-war.
He got free of her.
And then he hauled himself toward her.
At her. A fast, drunken lunge. While she struggled for balance.
I was on my feet, trying to get to him on the other side, to the handle
of the pitchfork, to push it so far into him that it would stop him. It
quivered like a bowstring. My foot slowed me down.
Just enough.
I had my hands on the handle as he went for her again and even the
crippled arm worked somehow as she tried to fend him off, the immense
heavy bulk of him that tore up high into her neck below the chin and
ripped her apart and covered them both with ash ower of hri0ht hloorl
I screamed.
The animal pulled her down, its right front paw tearing four long
gashes from the base of her neck to her stomach.
I don't even think she felt them.
But I did.
I had the handle by then. I had it and I used it. I was screeching
with rage and pain and I pushed, screamed and pushed with all my
strength, the image of her open mouth and eyes searing into my brain.
The animal let go of her and tried to shake me, just as it had done to
her. It thrashed at me. Snapped. Pulled. But I was crazy then, and
I was using two good hands instead of one and I stayed on, riding him
on the end of a long sharp stick, pressing it deeper with a power I
never knew I had, riding him down into the night.
There was blood rolling off his shoulder and I saw it change suddenly
from a dark ooze to a bright arterial spray. And then he was more than
even my rage and hatred could contain.
He hit one side of the cave and then the other. The mouth foamed and
spilled. The useless hind legs began to twitch. Its howling chilled
me to the bone.
A moment later the massive head turned upward one last time. The mouth
opened and closed as though baying at the far unseen moon. Its head
moved slowly down. Its cloudy eyes froze like small round stones.
I went to Casey.
I had to crawl. My body was trembling with exhaustion and something
else, something close to shock. I felt myself moving in and out of
reality as though a drug were working in me. I would see her there
just beyond me, blue eyes open wide, lips parted. I'd see the tides of
red sliding over her body. And then she'd be alive and laughing at me
across a long white beach, she'd be upstairs in my apartment walking
slowly toward me, I'd touch her, smell her hair, her skin.
I'd feel the sea worn stones beneath my hands and knees and that would
bring me back. I didn't want to come back. I moved toward her. It
was slow and hard, like moving through deep water.
I had nearly reached her when I saw him standing there.
Ben Crouch.
He was tall, hard, powerful. His hair was long and matted as Mary's
had been. His beard was sparse, long in patches, almost nonexistent
elsewhere. The clothes were filthy rags, shapeless, torn. His arms
were bare. The muscles in them bunched and shifted as he clenched his
long yellow fingers into fists. I felt the strength of him. It was
like being in the presence of the dog again. It pulsed off him in
angry waves and crashed like breakers against the walls of the cave.
His small dark eyes played slowly across the room, over all of us
there, and then came to rest on me.
