"I have to be your man then?" He smiled bitterly.
You have been ours since you first sought us for what we gave you. We require obedience, not ownership. That we have already.
"You . . . you"re a liar."
That and many other things. Believe what you will. Will you aid us?
"How could I . . . take you out?"
Let us come into you. Do not frown so. There will be no pain.
"And once out, once away from here, then what?"
Not what you expect. You see yourself loosing a plague on mankind, like Pandora and her box. But the box was opened years ago.
"What do you mean?"
We will leave here, you, Gabrielle Neville, Kelly Wickstrom, and us. You will marry Gabrielle Neville in a few months.
"I ..."
You do . . . love her, and she loves you. You will marry. Her wealth will disguise your past. And then one day we will no longer be with you. No trace will remain.
McNeely shook his head in confusion and licked his dry lips. "What if. . . if I wouldn"t marry Gabrielle?"
You must. The answer was terse, commanding.
"You"ll have to tell me why."
Why would you not want to marry her? She is beautiful and intelligent. She has control of the Neville businesses and will exercise that control far more wisely than her husband did. She will have much power.
"I don"t care about power!" McNeely cried, and the thing in his mind started to respond automatically, stopping before the words actually registered in the network of McNeely"s senses. But he knew what they would be all the same: We do.
And something unexpected to both McNeely and the collective beast with whom he conferred leaped between the single consciousness and the ma.s.s mind, and the man saw it all, saw it as it had been so carefully planned. He saw himself at Gabrielle"s side, both of them in evening dress, Gabrielle"s hand being kissed by an older man who looked tantalizingly familiar, then the man"s hand grasping his own, and himself responding with a firm shake of that hand, and of something pa.s.sing between them like a nearly undetectable electric shock, just enough to make both of them flinch ever so slightly, and himself suddenly feeling more buoyant, as though a weight of which he had not been consciously aware had nevertheless been lifted from him, and the older man turning back into the elegant crowd, a hint of newly found cruelty twisting his lip, a touch of evil in the eyes, a bit of madness in the mind that would the next day, next week, next month, sit in judgment on the fate of the world, a fevered, almost l.u.s.tful trembling in the hands in which rested the nuclear trigger.
Things to be done.
"You want to destroy . . . everything . . . kill everyone."
The thin nostrils flared, and a light leaped into the placid eyes. No. That is not true.
"You called yourself a liar! Why would you tell the truth now?"
It is not true.
"It is true! You"re after the . . . the end of everything." It was as though McNeely heard someone other than himself shouting at the thing. "No! Not me! I won"t do a thing to help you. You hear me, you . . . p.r.i.c.ks? You want to kill me, kill me! You want to scare me till I go crazy, go ahead!" He crossed the few feet toward the wall until the face was only inches from his own. "Kill me, b.a.s.t.a.r.ds-that"s what you want, well, go ahead, I"m waiting-kill me!"
He spat savagely into the pale face, and saw the spittle disappear, as if the white skin had abruptly parted to allow it to enter, then sealed itself up in an instant. At the same time, the face started to fade, vanishing in the s.p.a.ce of two heartbeats, leaving McNeely alone in the fire chamber.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" he yelled, swinging around to put his back to the wall. "You sc.u.m! Where are you! Come on, then, who"s the coward now?" His fingers flexed, eager to tear into anything in his path. "Neville!" he cried, venom in his tone. "Where are you, Neville? Frightened? Shivering in some corner?" McNeely stormed out of the fire chamber, crossed the cement floor, and ripped open the door of the wine cellar, oblivious of the stench that pushed out in a wave. "Are you there?" His foot swung back and arced into the smaller body beneath the cloth with a damp thud.
The sense of something yielding beneath his blows maddened him, and he kicked again and again at the covered corpse. "Wake up! Wake up! Let him come out, d.a.m.n you! He, wants me, let him come out and play!"
More kicks as a rotting arm was forced from beneath the cloth, fingers bent and clawed like twigs dripping with dark rain.
"Come on! Where"s your guts? Hah! Your guts!" he cried as his foot tore into wet softness.
Now the cloth was off the head, and the face gazed up from the floor, devoid of expression, vacant of life or of the half-life that had once possessed it. To McNeely, the sight was more horrifying than if it had been leering at him, clacking bared teeth and lifting ruined arms. But its face was merely dead, so that he knew he had been kicking a corpse.
He stepped back, looking down at his feet as if they had suddenly swollen with leprosy, then back at the unmoving face peering out from beneath the stained cloth. "You-every one of you," McNeely said, "when you"re ready, you can come for me. And you can kill me if you can, but I swear that I"ll make you hurt." He walked to the heavy door and turned. "d.a.m.n you.
"G.o.d d.a.m.n you."
A short time later Kelly Wickstrom was awakened from his sleep by a slight pressure on his bladder. s.h.i.t, he thought. I knew I shouldn"t"ve had that last bottle. He made his way into the bathroom, tugged down his boxer shorts, and sat slumped on the toilet, eyes half-closed. When he and, he stood, pulled up his shorts and walked into what he thought would be his bedroom.
His bedroom was no longer there.
Instead, freezing cold surrounded him, and a blaze of white light seared his eyes with its brilliance. A shrieking wind buffeted him, making him stagger backward so that he twisted around to support himself against the bathroom door. But the bathroom door was gone, and he toppled on his side onto a smooth sheet of white ice that clamped his skin with cold. He scrambled once more to his feet and looked around in desperation. There was nothing but a field of unbroken whiteness on all sides as far as he could see, with no dividing line where the horizon met the sky. It was as though the land and sky went on forever.
He closed his eyes to escape the sickness that was overwhelming him, only to discover that his eyelids had become transparent. Clapping his palms over his eyes, he found he could see through them as well. There would be no escape through blindness.
The sensation went beyond nausea or dizziness. It was a feeling that made his whole body want to scream, that gave him the desire to pummel himself into unconsciousness. Had he had a pistol, he might have shot himself. As it was, he could only stand and look at the vastness before him, knowing that in no way could there ever be more s.p.a.ce.
Then the unseen planes of land and sky started to curve away from him. It was something felt rather than seen, as the ice beneath his freezing feet curled down on all sides and the illusion of flatness faded until he felt as though he were perched on the top of an enormous ball whose sides swooped down and out from his position until he was standing in pure s.p.a.ce.
He looked overhead, but the sky, too, had curved up and away so that he could no longer detect it, and while the rest of his mind shrank into itself in fear, the part that still retained logical thought told him that he was lost in infinity, never to return, that he was forever a denizen of the void, a dweller in limitless s.p.a.ce, endless emptiness.
And his heart panicked, tripped, slowed then raced until, with a wiser knowledge all its own, it refused to grant the shrieking brain enough blood to continue the fantasy that had invaded it between the bedroom and the bath. Blessed darkness flooded Kelly Wickstrom"s mind, and he fell roughly to the floor.
Then there was dimness, a strange sound, and a voice. The sensation of being turned and held, and finally the ceiling of his bedroom, the walls, the furniture, the sacred solidity of matter. George talking to him.
"... walking by, and I heard you fall. Jesus, your head . . ."
Wickstrom touched the back of his head and winced as his hand contacted the lump. His fingers came away red. "Don"t move. Gabrielle! Gabrielle!"
Gabrielle stood framed by the doorway, light coming through her gown. She looked so solid . . . the floor felt so good beneath him.
"Get the first aid kit. Quick!" McNeely was holding something like a handkerchief at Wickstrom"s head now, and he wondered how badly he was bleeding. "What happened, Kelly? What happened?"
Wickstrom told him about the ice field, about the s.p.a.ce curving and flowing away until he was all alone in nothing. By the time he finished, he was crying softly while McNeely held him, and through his tears Wickstrom heard McNeely whisper, "Oh no, oh no, oh please G.o.d no, not them," and then gasp in horror, "Gabrielle!"
The scream came a second after the name had left McNeely"s lips. How could he have been so stupid, so mindless as to send her alone down there, he thought, springing to his feet and racing into the hall. He"d been so concerned with Wickstrom, the idea hadn"t crossed his mind that they"d want her as well. He practically fell down the stairs in his haste to reach the kitchen, dashed down the hall, and threw himself against the kitchen door.
He smelled it before he saw it. They were on the floor on the other side of the large table, Gabrielle on her back, her shredded nightgown pushed up to her chest, her eyes staring ceilingward, the blankness of madness in them. Her legs were spread shockingly wide, and between them, hips moving in quick sharp thrusts, was David Neville.
McNeely stood stunned as the movement stopped, and the shattered head turned to look over its shoulder. The torn lips split wider in a grin that was more glee than death rictus, and the remnant of a right eye gave a very definite, conspiratorial wink. Then the corpse collapsed like an empty sack, sinking onto the unmoving body of Gabrielle Neville.
Sobbing, McNeely ran to her, praying that she was still alive, clenching with frenzied fingers at the thing on top of her, moving it off her frighteningly still body. He searched for a pulse and found it, slow but steady. Then he held her, rocking her gently, and smoothed the gown back down over her bare stomach and hips. Aside from the wet leavings of Neville"s corpse, he could see no blood on the floor between her legs, and he wondered if Neville had really raped her. Jesus, how? There"s not enough blood left in him!
And dead men didn"t walk either. McNeely looked at the corpse lying on its side and noticed with relief that its clothing was still on, that no dead shriveled thing protruded from the front of the pants. At least, he thought, she had not been penetrated.
But what of her mind? It would have been better for the thing actually to couple with her and leave her mind untouched than to have her remain in this comatose state. "Gabrielle," he called softly. "Oh, Gabrielle, please, please hear me. Come back. . . ."
"Christ." Wickstrom stood in the doorway, a hand still pressed to his bleeding head. "What happened?" His voice was dazed, and McNeely feared his sanity was on the line. "What"s happening to us?"
If he could get Wickstrom to help, get him doing something, perhaps he"d come to himself. And there was something that McNeely had to do too. "Kelly," he said, "take care of Gabrielle. Just hold her. I"ve got to . . . I"m going to take this out of here so she won"t see it."
"Did it . . . come up . . . on its own?" Wickstrom asked in childlike awe.
"Yes," he said coldly. "On its own. Take her." Wickstrom knelt obediently and cradled Gabrielle in his arms. "And don"t follow me," McNeely ordered. He dragged the corpse through the open cellar door and pushed it ruthlessly down the stairs, following its flopping descent. One foot awkwardly on the bottom step, the other limbs beneath its torso, it looked like nothing human as he reached down again and hauled it for a third time into the corruption-rich air of the wine cellar. Then he slammed the door shut and ran across to the entrance of the fire chamber.
"Where are you!" he hissed.
There was no face present, but the voice was there. It seemed thin, airy. Here.
McNeely entered the room and closed the door behind him so that Wickstrom would not hear in the kitchen. "Leave them alone."
When it answered, it sounded almost weaker, as if compelled to retreat by his ferocity. Then serve us.
"f.u.c.k!" McNeely spat out. "You did that? With Kelly?"
Yes.
"And with Gabrielle ..." His voice broke. "Did Neville get away from you again?"
He did not get away. We turned him loose.
"Oh you ..."
Her mind is not gone. Nor Wickstrom"s. Not yet. There was a small appreciative chuckle. Neville f.u.c.ked her well. It was the first in a long time for him.
"He didn"t!" McNeely snarled. "Didn"t rape her ... I saw."
You saw what eyes can see.
"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Where are you?"
Everywhere.
"I can"t see you."
We wish to be unseen.
McNeely could only stand, breathing heavily, wishing for something to kill.
Will you serve us now?
"Serve you?"
What happened to Wickstrom and the woman was nothing to what we can do. Do you think she would like to see the child she had aborted? Have it speak to her and call her Mama? Would she like to see you with Jeff? Or with that Senegalese boy, the one whose b.u.t.tocks were so tight ...
"Stop it!"
How old was he? Thirteen? Twelve? Younger? But you were high on kif, not really responsible.
"Shut up, G.o.d d.a.m.n you!"
Would she like to hear how he whimpered, how he cried? Would she like to feel what he felt at your hands?
"Shut up, shut up, shut up ..."
Then serve us.
"No! Go ahead and tell Gabrielle. Show her whatever you want. You want to kill the world, and if I serve you, you"ll do it, so why should I care? Either way we die, all of us. Why should I care?"
It"s a dying world, dying for decades. We only wish to speed the process.
"Why?"
To pay our debts! There was a pause, then a low laugh, as if it were amused at McNeely"s childishness. The earth is dying every day, from a hundred different diseases. Would you have it die slowly, from a mult.i.tude of cancers? Or would it not be more n.o.ble, more heroic, for it to hold a gun to its head and pull the trigger? Do you not value heroism?
"It"s our choice, not yours," McNeely replied, his voice firm. "It"s for the living to decide, not dead things. Besides, there"s still hope. We"ve not given up yet."
There is no hope. That we lie, you know. The Father of Lies. But this much is true: Earth is dying, and there is no hope. So the choice is yours. Serve us and die with the cataclysm. Or die now.
McNeely opened his lips to speak, and there was fire in his eyes.
Before you speak, think well, the voice interrupted. If you choose to die now, you will stay here.
"Stay here ..."
With us.
"Am I ... so evil then?" The fire dimmed to a spark.
Every man has evil within, but often the good overbalances it. It is different here. We are too strong for you to escape. Too strong for anyone who dies here to escape. You will be with us, part of us, for eternity.
Eternity. The word echoed inside McNeely"s head. He had known this place was h.e.l.l, but he had not known he would be one of the d.a.m.ned. He struggled to find a mental path out of the dark wood, but could only spy a barely comforting rationalization. "If I served you," he said calmly, "I"d be yours anyway. Either way ... I"m d.a.m.ned."
A murmuring noise came back to him, as if the thing had not considered that point of view. Then came the words that pinned McNeely to the wall: But she is not.
"She . . ."
Your death means hers. She will be with us. It would be interesting to have a guest with so much goodness in her. Mr. Fish would be delighted. And M. de Sade. And her husband. Especially her husband. He will make her realize how long eternity is. And she will learn that among us there are enough different . . . needs to fill eternity quite easily.