“I saw his face, Saul. I’m not talking about a man’s…I saw his face as it was changing.”
“Crap…I was afraid you’d say something like that.” Weinstock got up and walked over to the window and stared out into the new morning, which was bright and clear, with puffy clouds coasting across the vast blue. Without turning he said, “Even if you saw what you say you saw and all your guesswork is right…what does that have to do with what’s been happening in town?” He turned around and sat on the edge of the air conditioner. “It doesn’t fit with the stuff I’ve been seeing—not at all. Not even with the killings at the Guthrie farm. None of this says ‘werewolf’ to me, even if I was ready to believe in that sort of thing. Full moon was last Friday…the two cops were killed on the first. We’re not following the lunar cycle.”
“I know, but like I said, I don’t think we’re dealing with a werewolf right now. From what I’ve been able to put together, we seem to be in vampire territory.”
“Did that statement sound as stupid to you as it did to me?”
“Probably,” Crow admitted. “There’s more. When Ruger attacked Val and me here in the hospital that night he said something before he died. Something Val didn’t hear, but I did, and it’s been like a needle stuck in my brain ever since.” Crow closed his eyes for a second, took a breath, and then looked hard at Weinstock as he spoke, “He said, ‘Ubel Griswold sends his regards.’”
“Ruger said that? He actually said Griswold’s name?”
“Uh-huh, and when we were fighting…he was way too strong. I mean stronger than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’ve been in the martial arts since I was a kid. I know what muscle strong is like, and I know what wiry strong is like, and this was something completely different. Off the scale…strong in a way nothing rational can describe.”
“Man, I think we left rational behind by a couple of miles.”
“No joke. Ruger’s eyes were weird, too. They seemed to change color while we were fighting. Don’t laugh, but I swear they turned yellow and then red.”
“I’m not laughing,” Weinstock said. “I may never laugh again. Ever.”
Crow told Weinstock about how he met Newton, and about the long interview he’d given him. He told him how they had cooked up a plan to scale down the pitch at Dark Hollow and head through the woods to try and find Griswold’s house. He spoke about the strangeness of the swampy area around Dark Hollow, and how they had been forced to cut their way through foul-smelling vines and sticker bushes before they found the house. “I really wanted to find an old, abandoned pile of sticks, but that’s not what we found. The place was in good shape, like it had been maintained. All the doors and windows were covered up with plywood that was still green, and the front and back doors were chained shut with the locks on the inside of the house. Only someone inside could lock or unlock those chains.”
“Oh my God…”
“Then, while we were on the porch examining those locks, the whole porch roof just suddenly collapses down.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Damn near killed us. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”
“A ‘little strange’?” Weinstock echoed hoarsely. His color was horrible.
“Well, buckle up ’cause it gets stranger.” Crow told him about the swarm of roaches that attacked them. “Now here’s the last part of it. When I was standing there on the porch, before the roof fell and the roaches attacked us, I thought I heard a voice in my head. Very faint, but definitely there—and before you start making jokes about me hearing voices, here’s what it said, ‘She is going to die and there is nothing you can do to save her.’”
Weinstock stared at him in horror. “This was last night? You had that in your head while—”
“While Val was walking into the trap with Boyd. I was being teased with it, as if he knew I’d never get back to Val’s farm in time to save her from Boyd.”
“‘He’? Are you saying that this was Griswold’s voice?”
“I don’t know. I mean…I think the bastard’s dead. Thirty years dead, probably buried by the Bone Man in an unmarked grave, and there haven’t been any attacks around that you could point to as being like Griswold’s.”
“Unless he isn’t dead and maybe moved away for a while,” Weinstock ventured. “He could have moved over to Jersey or up to the Poconos, started another farm, kept himself in check all these years, and maybe now he’s come back.”
“I thought about that, and it’s certainly a possibility—but I feel like he’s dead, that he’s been dead since 1976. Just a gut thing, but it’s what I believe.”
“So whose voice was it?”
Crow shook his head. “That’s just it. I suppose it might have been Boyd doing kind of vampire mind-fuck on me, but my gut still tells me it was Griswold.”
“Which makes sense only if, somehow, Griswold is still here. As…what, though? A ghost? Are we finally adding them to the mix?”
“Hell if I know. I guess that very last part of it, at least from my end, is the whole Boyd thing. I saw his body, and apart from all the rounds Val pumped into him he had a whole bunch of other bullet wounds. Nine, to be exact, and all of them pretty well healed over. Remember, Jimmy Castle emptied his gun into him, hit him every damn time.”
“Jeez…don’t tell me that. I haven’t even had a chance to view the body yet.”
“Now,” Crow said, “now let’s hear your side of this.”
Weinstock gave him a long, flat stare. “You won’t like it.”
Crow made a rude noise. “I knew that before we started talking. But I have to know.”
Weinstock told him everything. Crow didn’t like it.
Chapter 4
1
The silence between Vic and Ruger was thick as mud. Vic went back to his workbench and tried to concentrate on how many sticks of dynamite it would take to bring down the cellular phone relay tower. When he was done with that he had to go out and meet a candy maker he knew who was doing some work for him. Treats for Halloween night. There was a ton of other stuff needing attention, and Vic was feeling the pressure.
Ruger was in the recliner reading a battered old copy of Emily Gerard’s The Land Beyond the Forest. Someone had made extensive handwritten notes in the margin of every page.
Into the stony silence, Ruger murmured, “I’m getting hungry.”
Vic’s right finger paused over the Enter key on his calculator; his left hand twitched in the direction of the pistol lying on the table. “It’s still light out,” he said, not turning.
Ruger was quiet for a while, then very softly—so softly Vic barely heard him even though he straining to hear any sounds coming from that end of the cellar—the killer whispered, “Hungry.”
The word haunted the air in that dark cellar.
2
Weinstock rubbed his tired eyes. “How much of this does Val know?”
“She knows the backstory, the Massacre and that stuff. She knows my theories. I didn’t have time to tell her what happened down in the Hollow yesterday. Not after what she went through herself, still she has to know there’s something strange is happening. You know Val—she’s not stupid or given to hysterics. She knows what she saw last night when Boyd came after her. She kept shooting him and Boyd kept wading through the shots.”
“Not all of them, apparently.”
“No,” Crow agreed, “and let’s thank God for that. Apparently the one thing they can’t shake off is half a clip in the skull.”
“Important to remember,” Weinstock said, almost to himself. “Did either of you mention the…um…‘V-word’?”
“No, but before the ambulance guys took her she told me that she knew that Boyd was dead. She knew it when he was still on his feet and coming after her. Maybe she hasn’t put the name to it yet, but she knows.” He stared at the closed door as if he could already see Val. “I’m not sure if that’s going to make it easier or harder.”
“Seems to me that it should make it easier.”
Crow looked at Weinstock, and there was raw pain in his eyes. “Saul, Boyd didn’t just kill Mark…he bit him. Connie, too.”
Crow saw the meaning of that register on Weinstock’s face. “Holy God.”
“I think we have to tell her everything. She’s lost her entire family to this. She has a bigger stake in it than anyone. We have to be straight with her.”
At that moment there was a tap on the door and a nurse popped her head in. “Doctor? We’d like to bring Ms. Guthrie in, is that okay?”
Both men leapt to their feet as two orderlies wheeled Val in on a gurney. Her right eye and most of her head was turbaned in thick bandages, and most of the exposed flesh of her cheek, nose, and chin were puffy with dark red bruises. She was dressed in a white ER gown patterned with tiny cornflowers. She saw Crow and her eye widened, but before she could even say his name he’d pushed past the nurse and bent over her.
“Val!” Crow cried, shouldering past the orderlies. He bent to her, murmuring her name over and over again, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her lips. “Oh, baby! How are you?”
Val kissed him back, tears spilling from her eye. In a shattered voice she said, “Mark!” and then her voice disintegrated into sobs as he held her.
After a minute or so Weinstock gently pulled Crow away, and Val was transferred to the bed, hooked up to a fresh saline drip, and plugged into monitors. Weinstock shooed everyone but Crow out of the room. Polk appeared in the doorway, glaring at Crow.
“Hey, I thought I told you that you weren’t supposed to talk to my witness?”
Crow wheeled on him and was just about to tear into him when Weinstock stepped between them. “What’s the problem, Jim?”