When her shouts came, the shock lasted only an instant. Then the flashlight beam swung weakly across the yard, the house, as he pelted toward the porch. Two voices rose, shattering the sound patterns of the crickets.
“’Thena!” He thudded up the steps. “The door! Unlatch the—!” He ripped the screen door from its hinges, flinging it aside.
“…running…coming now…blood running in the trees!” The boy twisted, shrieking on the floor. “Hide me! My friend, hu-hurting…!”
Down beside him, she struggled to restrain him. “He just fell,” she gasped, looking up at Steve, who stood frozen in the doorway. “…and…and started to…”
The boy flailed and growled, froth at his mouth. In the far corner, Dooley crouched, shivering, with lips curled back. Together, the man and woman held the screaming, weeping child until his struggles grew weaker and his head dropped back, thudding on the floorboards.
“…run…”
“Who’s running?” Steve leaned over him, his face just a few inches from the boy’s. “Is it Chabwok?”
“…the trees…”
“Is Chabwok coming here?”
Matty’s lips moved as he shuddered feebly. Steve released his hold on the boy’s shoulders and looked to Athena.
Matty’s eyes flew open.
“No, Steve! Don’t let go of him!”
The boy struggled unsteadily to his feet, and when she moved to grab him, Steve waved her back.
As though drawn by invisible chains, Matty stumbled toward the open doorway. His arms swung limply at his sides, and his feet shuffled. Steve reached out gently and took hold of him by a belt loop. He stopped moving; slowly one arm rose. “…night-rushing…” The pointing finger described a small arc to the left.
“That’s it then. It’s over that way.” Steve checked the flashlight. “Look at him. He knows. You were right. Somehow he’s sensitive to it.” He turned to her, confronting the fear in her eyes. “You take the rifle. We were wrong to wait. We’re getting out now.”
He allowed the trembling boy to lead him onto the porch, and she followed, pulling back just at the doorway. The dog also cowered, watching with eyes dull as slag.
“What is it, ’Thena? Do you hear something? Do you see…?”
“Nothing.” She stared past him. “Only the dark.”
He stepped back and put a hand on her face, and then he was gone, beyond the spill of light, down the porch stairs and into the yard.
A moment passed before she could make herself follow. “Good-bye, house,” she whispered, touching the kitchen wall. Taking the key ring from her pocket, she pulled the heavy inner door shut behind her, snuffing out the wedge of light. “Good-bye, Wallace.” She fumbled with the flashlight. “Steve! Where did you go?”
“We’re over here.” Drowned in darkness, voices drifted on currents of warm air. She heard them walking away, the boy stumbling like a sleepwalker, and she hurried after them.
Around the side of the house, Steve waited for her. “We didn’t bring the suitcases, Steven.”
“Forget it. Get in the car. Where’s the dog?”
“I thought you had him.”
“Dooley! Dooley, come here, boy. Here, dog.”
“Did he head over that way?”
“Dooley, come back here. Goddamn it!”
“I don’t think I saw him come out of the house. Could he have gone back under the sofa again?”
“’Thena, the dog will be all right. I’ll pick him up in the morning when I get your suitcases. Let’s just get to my house and try to rest.”
They got in the Plymouth, Steve behind the wheel, the boy between them on the front seat. She handed Steve the keys and checked the locks on all the doors. When she turned the boy’s face to her, his eyes twisted away to stare through the windshield.
“Chabwok would never hurt you, would he, baby?”
Awareness seemed to flicker on his face, then fade, leaving only ashes. The engine chattered, and the car rolled onto the winding sand. For a moment, headlights caught the silent house. Then it vanished, behind them in the night. They paused at the sand hill, the tires crackling over sticks.
She pointed. “That leads to the highway.”
“What’s down the other way?”
“I don’t know, Steve. Nothing.”
The boy’s face stayed slack, but with a sudden bolt, he pointed his whole body toward the fork that led away from the highway.
“It’s down that way, ’Thena. What ever it is, it’s down there.”
The engine idled. The boy moaned with an agitated rumble in his throat.
“Steve?” She peered down the dark fork.
“Yeah, I see it.”
“What is it?”
“A car, or a truck, I can’t tell.”
“Drive up a little farther,” she told him.
He looked at her.
“We have to. If there’s people in it, we have to warn them.”
The car turned laboriously.
“Be careful of the sand here.” Her voice was so soft, it was almost as though she were talking in her sleep. “The car gets stuck sometimes.”
A small tree broken beneath it, the panel truck leaned against the woods off the road. Doorless and battered. No license plate. Broken windshield.
“Do you recognize it?”
“I’m not sure. I think I may have seen it around town.” The boy knocked against her as he began rocking back and forth, faster and wilder, mumbling to himself.
Steve rolled down the window. “Anybody around?! Yo! Can anybody hear me?”
The boy’s lips continued to move, his face lit by dashboard dials. He cocked his head to one side, listening to voices only he could hear, and his eyes never wavered from the night.
“You’re going to make yourself sick again, baby. Try to calm down.” In response, the boy murmured weakly, wildly. Trying not to hear, she took his face in her hands. “Matty, listen to me. It’s going to be all right. Do you hear me? It’s okay. Steve? What are you doing?”
“I have to get out and check.”
“No!”
“Just stay put a minute. I could swear I see somebody in that truck.” The door slammed behind him.
“Steven!”
A few quick steps brought him to the other vehicle. Then the smell hit him. “Oh my God.”
Something headless slumped at the wheel.
Marl screamed away from it. He would not look up. Not for anything. Above him, impossibly huge, he knew its eyes glowed red with hellish fires, and its long tail whipped through the pines. Swaying, it spread wings that blacked out the night sky.
It hovered, taloned feet hanging just above the sand. A rope of saliva glistened as it opened its mouth and howled.
Dwarfed by the thing, he sobbed and rolled about the clearing, trying to escape the monstrous flapping, but all around, the hated pines pressed closer, trapping him. Each time the monster screamed, Marl hunched farther into himself, a tight ball, tearing soft hairs from his chest in fear and kicking at the dirt.
The woods wavered. He was safe elsewhere, gazing out through a windshield into the night as the woman’s arms tightened around him.
