“Yeah?” Marty shot back, the ebullience he’d been feeling only a moment ago starting to dissolve into anger. “What about the guy who killed his whole family in there?”
“He was a nut case. And you knew about it when you moved in, didn’t you?”
“How do you know what I knew and what I didn’t?” Marty challenged.
The bartender rolled his eyes, picked up Marty’s glass, and drained his own still full one into the sink. “Everybody knows everything around here,” he said, putting the two twenties back on the bar in front of Marty. “Tell you what — why don’t we just call it one on the house?”
Marty glowered as the heat of the alcohol spread through him. “You throwin’ me outta here?”
“I’m just trying to close my place up for the night,” the bartender replied. He glanced toward the opposite end of the bar, where the only other customer in the place was draining a beer. “You about done, Sergeant?” he called out, then glanced back at Marty. “All the cops in town hang out here,” he drawled. “Probably why I never have any trouble.”
Marty’s dark gaze shifted from the bartender to the man at the far end of the bar, who was now staring at him. “Fine,” he said, shoving the bills into his pocket and rising unsteadily to his feet.
“You need a lift, I can—” the bartender began, but Marty cut him off.
“I’m okay,” he said. Before either the bartender or the cop could argue with him, Marty shoved through the door and out onto the sidewalk. Sucking his lungs full of the cold night air, he started down the street.
A minute later the cop and the bartender stepped out onto the sidewalk and watched as Marty weaved his way toward Black Creek Road. “What do you think?” the sergeant asked. “How drunk is he?”
The bartender shrugged. “Not enough to get in any trouble. He’ll just stagger home and pass out.” Then he laughed. “’Course, that’s not saying he won’t be having any hallucinations on the way.” As they went back inside and he drew each of them a beer from the tap, the bartender began telling the cop what Marty Sullivan had said.
“Oh, Lord,” the cop sighed. “Here we go again. I figured Father Mike would be the last one to start talking about all that crap, but what the hell do I know?” He shook his head. “Witches,” he sighed. “Jesus, don’t people have anything better to do?”
The heat of the last shot of Johnnie Walker was beginning to fade as Marty came to the edge of the village. He pulled the zipper of his jacket all the way up to his neck as the wind began to blow out of the northeast. Overhead, clouds scudded across the sky, and as he left the warm glow of the streetlights behind, the darkness closed around him like a shroud and fragments of the things Father Mulroney had told him began to rise unbidden from his memory.
Storms like the one that had struck this afternoon.
A girl Angel’s age.
The same things Marty had seen.
Marty’s pulse quickened, and so did his step.
The moon came out, and for an instant the darkness was washed away in a silvery glow.
And ahead of him he saw a figure.
A dark figure, little more than a shadow in the faint light of the moon. But Marty recognized it, and his breath caught in his throat as he froze in his tracks.
It was the girl — the same girl he’d seen in the living room when the cat attacked him.
The figure in the darkness moved closer, and Marty instinctively raised his arms as if to fend her off.
A cloud drifted over the moon.
The silvery light faded.
The figure vanished, but Marty remained rooted where he was, his heart pounding, his breath coming in short, labored gasps. A terrible chill fell over him — an iciness far colder than the night that reached deep inside him and gripped his soul. The cold made him shiver, and his teeth began to chatter, but still he couldn’t make himself move.
His eyes searched the darkness for any sign of the black-clad figure that had been there only moments ago, but now all but the faintest glimmer of light seemed to have been blotted out, and even the shapes of the trees had vanished into the blackness surrounding him.
Slowly, his heart began to slow, his gasping breath to even out. But still he stayed where he was, for even though he could see nothing and his whole body was numbed with cold, he could still feel the presence of something lurking in the darkness.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Marty caught a faint flicker of golden light. He jerked his head around as his heart once more began to race, but whatever he’d seen was gone, vanishing into the darkness as quickly as it had come.
Then he saw it again, this time out of the corner of the other eye. But now the golden light didn’t vanish when he turned toward it, and as he saw the two glowing eyes staring at him, the iciness in his blood ran even colder.
The eyes drew nearer, staying close to the ground.
They vanished, only to reappear a few seconds later, three or four feet to the left and a few feet closer.
“Scat!” Marty said, but even to his own ears the word sounded oddly hollow. “Go on! Get away!”
Instead of vanishing, the eyes moved nearer still. Now the invisible creature’s eyes fixed on his own, and Marty had the horrible sensation that if he couldn’t look away, couldn’t tear his eyes from the golden orbs floating in the darkness, the creature would reach into him and tear away his very soul.
The eyes stopped moving, but their hypnotic gaze still held Marty pinned to the spot where he stood. Seconds passed — seconds that felt like minutes — but still Marty couldn’t move.
He felt the creature tensing, could almost see it readying itself to leap at him, almost feel its claws and fangs sinking into his flesh.
As his fear coalesced into panic, a broken howl of anguish rose in his throat, and finally he managed to lash out with his foot at the staring eyes.
The eyes vanished, and then Marty was running, bolting through the blackness, driven as much by his own panic as the terror of what might be pursuing him. But he lost his footing, pitched forward, and fell face first into the drainage ditch that ran next to the road. Swearing, he pulled himself up to his knees, wiping the muck from the ditch away from his eyes with his sleeve. A sob of pain mixed with fear and frustration rose in his throat, and he crawled back onto the road, bracing himself for the attack he knew was sure to come. He was just starting to haul himself back to his feet when the moon came out again and the wind died away. Marty blinked in the brightness of the silvery light, and searched for the creature that had stalked him only a moment ago.
Nothing.
He was alone on the road.
He peered in every direction, then began edging cautiously along the road. But with every step he took, he imagined that something was behind him, and the skin on the back of his neck began to crawl until he spun around, braced to defend himself against whatever might be behind him.
But there was only the night.
He felt another sob rise in his throat, and moved out into the center of the road, terrified that whatever was stalking him was hidden in the trees.
He was stumbling now, nearly tripping over his own feet, and another sob threatened to strangle him. Then, in the distance, he saw a light glowing. His first instinct was to turn and run, to try to race back into whatever safety the darkness might offer. Then he realized that this time the light was not the terrible glowing of the creature’s eyes, but the porch light of his own house.
Sucking in a breath deep enough to break through the terror that had built inside him, he ran again, but this
