here he couldn’t hear the ticking of the clock, but there was the soft rustle of the damp October wind through the trees and the skitter of dry leaves on the shingled roof. He sighed heavily and got up, packed a big suitcase of clothes, toiletries, and makeup for Val, and went downstairs. No way was he going to bring Val back here when she was released from the hospital; he’d convince her to stay with him. Maybe even try to get her to consider selling the farm. There was nothing left there but ghosts anyway.
He turned off most of the lights and locked the door behind him and left that house of the dead.
(2)
In his dreams Terry Wolfe ran and ran and ran, and the beast ran after. Always following, never tiring, always getting closer. Hour by hour, minute by minute, the beast closed the distance between them as Terry ran through the lightless corridors of the oubliette. There was an infinity of hallways and passages, but no matter which one he chose his running feet—slapping bare on the clammy stone floor—would circle him back to the central chamber and there, bathed in the only light that shone in that forgotten place, his body lay on its hospital bed, surrounded by useless and incomprehensible machines. Each time he staggered out of a side tunnel and skidded to a terrified halt in front of his bed, in front of his own naked and battered body, he would pause just for a second—he couldn’t risk longer than that because the beast was always just around the last bend—and he could see that his body was dying.
And that it was changing.
As the life ebbed out of him, as the life force that made him who he was drained away, the meat and muscle and bone of that physical form in the bed changed. The nails were darker, thicker, longer. Just in the last few minutes his jaw had changed, elongated, stretching to allow more teeth. His forehead had become lumpy, thrusting out a heavy brow while the skull flattened above it, sloping back. There was more hair on the face, thicker hair on the chest and arms. Beneath the lids his eyes twitched and flicked.
“That’s not me!” Terry yelled as he turned and fled away down another hallway.
The echo that chased him repeated only the last word: “Me! Me! Me!”
Behind him, just past the pursuing wave of echoes, the beast growled in red fury.
(3)
Mike came to the hospital to see Val, but her room was empty and Crow was nowhere to found. A nurse told him that Val was expected back in twenty minutes or so and asked if he’d like to wait. He told her he’d be back and just wandered the halls for a while. It was visiting hours, so none of the nurses or doctors gave him so much as a glance, even when he went downstairs into the ICU wing, which smelled of disinfectant, sickness, and fear. Mike didn’t like the smell, or the way it made him feel, and he almost turned around, but something kept him moving down the hall, as if an invisible hand pushed him gently from behind.
There were twenty-four small bedroom units, each with a big glass window to allow for maximum visibility. Mike drifted along slowly, peering through the glass into each room. Most of the units were empty, a few had old people in them, most of whom already looked dead; one had a young Hispanic man who was bound up in a complicated series of harnesses. Mike wondered if that was Jose Ramos, the guy who worked for Val. The one who’d gotten his neck snapped by Boyd. The thought tumbled around in Mike’s brain for a bit, stirring up different emotions. At first he felt a wave of fear—Mike could imagine almost any kind of pain, having felt so much of it himself—then the fear congealed into sadness, and he crept away, hoping that Vic never went so far overboard that he broke his neck. To be helpless like that, just trapped in a dead body, totally vulnerable, unable to even lift a hand to block the slaps or punches, or to halt the other even more terrible things that Vic could do—that would be the worst thing. He didn’t want to look at that thought and moved quickly away from that room as if distance could keep him from the dreadful images that rose up in his mind.
The next unit was ICU #322 and the patient there was also heavily bandaged and had his limbs in casts supported by straps. Mike slowed to a stop, not sure why, and stared through the open doorway at the man. The air around him seemed to shimmer, but Mike’s whole concentration was focused on that patient.
He blinked his eyes once, twice, and suddenly he realized that he wasn’t in the doorway anymore. He had walked inside all the way to the foot of the bed without any conscious awareness of the action of the passage of time. Those seconds were just
The patient’s head was heavily bandaged and the visible face was just bruised meat, the skin painted black and purple, the lips puffed, the swollen eyes closed. There was no trace of dreaming movement behind those lids. Despite the beeping of the machines Mike had to watch the man’s chest for a full minute to convince himself this person was even alive. Only his face, his throat, and his fingers were visible. The arm nearest him was raised, the white cast bent at the elbow, slings supporting it off the bed so that the fingers of that hand were inches from Mike’s face. Big fingers; a big man. Mike stared in fascination at the hand. The nails were neatly manicured, the fingers showing no calluses or scars; on the back of the hand there were curls of red hair. For no good reason he could think of, Mike raised his own hand and held it near to the man’s, comparing the hairs, which were a little darker than his own. The width of the palm, the shape of the knuckles, the proportionate length of the fingers, though, were very similar to his own. Mike had never known his father, Big John Sweeney, but he always imagined that he and his dad would look alike, and this man’s hand looked like it could be his own in twenty or thirty years. Big and strong, despite the injuries. The red hair gone darker with age.
The face that had looked at him from the bathroom mirror in Crow’s store was an older version of himself, with a stronger jaw and gaunt skin stretched over sharply etched brow and cheekbones. Thin, hard lips in an unsmiling mouth. Dark red-brown hair. Strange eyes. Alien.
Mike almost reached out and touched this man’s eyelids to raise them, feeling a strange compulsion to see what color those eyes were. Would they be blue shot with red and ringed with fiery gold? Mike was afraid they would be.
He did not know that he was going to touch this man’s hand, would never have deliberately done so, but it was as if some unseen hand just nudged his forward. Without warning his fingers reached out and curled around the pinky and ring finger of the comatose man.
Mike Sweeney, for all intents and purposes, evaporated into mist at the point of contact. The room in which he stood, the house around the room, the world around the hospital just melted into a featureless blur, faded to darkness, and then winked out.
He was not Mike Sweeney anymore. He was…nothing. A shell casing where inside something that was not Mike Sweeney shifted and groaned. Time was meaningless. If there was air he did not breathe it, or could not feel himself inhale or exhale. If there was light, then either he was blind or could not process the concept of vision. He remained still, just a husk.
He heard another squelching sound and turned quickly, freezing at once into shocked immobility as a huge white stag paced around him in a wide, slow circle. It was snow white, with just a scattering of brick-red flecks on its haunches and eyes that burned with orange fire. The rack was huge, glistening with moisture from the damp air. It moved slowly, looking at him with calm intensity. Mike knew that animal, had seen it once before, that night on the road when it had stood between him and the section of cornfield where a car had gone off the road and plowed itself deep into the field. Mike had wanted to check it out, to see if anyone had been hurt, but this deer—an albino stag—had come out of the night and had stood between him and the wreck, barring his way. With all that had happened later that night, and all that had happened since, Mike had barely remembered the animal until now, and yet here it was.
But where was here?
Mike turned his head and saw that he stood on a gravel driveway leading up to the battered hulk of an abandoned house. Above the house the sky was bruise-blue fading to blackness in the distance. Lightning burning continuously around him, charging the air with ozone, but there was no thunder—just the constant strobe-flicker of lightning above and beyond the house. It was a house he knew, though when he had seen it the shutters had been freshly painted and secure, not hanging from rusted hinges; the windows had been whole, not yawning like jagged mouths, dusty gray on the outside of the each broken pane and ink black inside the maw. On this house the shingles had been shed like scabs from old wounds, and the door hung twisted, sagging down to a porch whose boards had all buckled and warped.
Aware that the stag was watching him, Mike turned away from the house, feeling and hating the deadness of
