"Nothing," he replies.
Inside, when they step out of the rain, they find the witch staring out the window with a burning cigarette in one hand and burning sage in the other.
"Aw, Mom," says Christine, "we just cleaned the floor. You"re getting ashes all over it." She goes to the linen closet and gets a towel for herself and one for Caleb. As he towels off his hair, he confronts her.
"Christine, did you know who was down there?"
She stops drying herself and gives him a quizzical look. "I never went down there before. It was always locked up. Mom said she didn"t have the key. Why? What did you find?"
Caleb turns to the witch. "Mrs. Zikry?"
She sings under her breath: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the morn . . ."
"Mrs. Zikry!" he says louder.
"From the deep and darkest water great Lucifer is born. When six and sixty souls are dead he"ll blow his mighty horn . . ."
"Hey!" says Caleb, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her toward him. "What did you do to my father?"
Her face is a grin full of gray, crooked teeth. ". . . and h.e.l.l is marching on!" she finishes with raucous laughter.
He throws her down on the couch with one hand and grips the hatchet tighter with the other.
"Billy!" Christine says. "Don"t! She"s just crazy."
"That was my father down there, Christine! He"s dead! He was chained up like a dog." Tears are hot on his cheeks now; it"s too late to try to stop them, too late to be ashamed.
He turns back to the witch.
"Why?" he screams, "You"d better answer me! Why did you do it?"
The witch just laughs and hums to herself. She takes a bottle out from under a couch cushion and takes a swig.
"You"ll pay for what you did," he says flatly.
"Billy, don"t hurt her," says Christine. She"s close behind him now, with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Don"t hurt her. She isn"t well, you can see that. I never told you this, I never told anyone, but she was in the asylum once. I found some papers in her dresser one time. She isn"t well."
"Ticktock, ticktock," says the witch.
"She was in the asylum?" says Caleb.
"Yes," says Christine. "I never told you because-"
But he"s already turned on the witch again.
"You!" he says. "Put down that bottle and look at me, or I swear to G.o.d I"ll chop you in half!"
The witch raises the bottle to her eye and looks at him through it, laughing soundlessly.
"Why did you lock him up down there?" he says, trying to appear calm now. "Just tell me and I won"t hurt you."
She drops the bottle and looks at Caleb squarely.
"He told me to."
"Who?"
"You know who," she says. "Johnny."
"Jonathan Morle?" Caleb asks.
She ignores him.
"Why did Morle tell you to do that?" he presses.
"That detective was always sneaky," she says, gesturing to the cellar. Then changing the subject: "The spirits won"t talk to me . . . " she says sadly, then pauses and stares down into the whiskey bottle as if it were full of tea leaves. "But Johnny talks to me."
"And you knew him in the asylum?"
"Of course."
"And you followed his orders?"
"Of course."
"Why?"
"Why, why, why, why? Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie!" says the witch with a repulsive, childish giggle.
"And what about Anna? Did you let him take her? Or did you kill her yourself?"
"ANNA IS ALIVE!" screams the witch, and suddenly she"s on her feet. Her ritual knife has appeared from nowhere, and it"s at Caleb"s throat.
He thinks he could take her with the hatchet if he"s fast enough, even though he can already feel the sharp edge of her knife breaking the skin in tiny places. His muscles tense to strike.
"Mom, no!" yells Christine, jumping between them.
"You bad, bad, bad girl!" spits the witch. "Get back."
"Mom! Caleb! Both of you, please, let"s just figure out how to save Mr. Bent and Margie and the other kids, if we can, and get the h.e.l.l out of this town. Please," says Christine.
Caleb and the witch exchange an icy look. She isn"t laughing anymore. "Maybe we should wait until morning," says Caleb.
"By morning it"ll be all over," says the witch.
"What?" says Caleb sarcastically, "the end of the world?"
The witch just smiles a slow smile and plays her fingers across the blade of her knife.
"She"s right," says Christine. "They"ll be dead before morning, if they aren"t already."
"We could just leave," says Caleb. "Get as far away as we can as fast as we can. There"s no way the world is really going to end. That guy might be able to talk to ghosts, but that doesn"t mean he knows what"s really going to happen. Maybe everything will be okay."
The witch smiles big. "Tick, tock, tick."
Christine shakes her head. "The dead are guiding his actions," she says. "Maybe you"re right; maybe he"s just crazy. But can we really take that chance? What if it"s true? We have to stop him."
"If the devil walked among us, if the world ended, everybody would suffer and die . . . And we would have turned our backs on trying to stop it," says Caleb with a sigh. He makes up his mind. "Do we have any weapons? Besides this stupid hatchet?"
Christine shakes her head. "Just the cooking knives."
"Wait," says the witch. She disappears into the bedroom.
Christine and Caleb exchange a look.
"Billy," Christine says, "I"m sorry-" Tears swell in her eyes and her voice cuts off, then comes back. "I"m sorry about your dad. I swear to G.o.d I didn"t know. I wouldn"t blame you if you killed my mom; it"s just . . . she raised me. She tried. She"s just . . . broken. I"m sorry, Billy." She puts a hand on his arm.
He sloughs it off. "Everyone calls me Caleb now," he says.
The witch reappears from the hallway, carrying a dusty little cardboard box. She sets it on the coffee table then looks at them expectantly. Christine leans over and looks in the box. She reaches into it and pulls out a small, dust-covered revolver. It"s so old its chrome plating has worn off in places.
"Was this Dad"s?" she asks.
The witch nods.
"Why are you giving us this?" asks Caleb. "I thought you were on Morle"s side."
The witch shrugs.
"We should go," says Christine.
"No," says Caleb. "I want to know why she"d give us this if she really wants Morle to win. It"s probably a trick. It doesn"t make any sense."
He turns back to the witch. "Well?"
She smiles again, shrugs. "Johnny"s gonna win," she says. "No matter what."
"Caleb," Christine says, "we should go."
Caleb"s stare lingers on the witch as he tries to plumb the depth of her insanity. Finally, he gives up and follows Christine to the door, gun in hand.
At the door he stops, turns back to the witch.
She"s already busied herself lighting candles and humming.
"My father was a great man," says Caleb. "He won"t be forgotten."
The witch pauses in her humming and looks at Caleb.
"Yes, Billy," she says pleasantly. "I know."
As Caleb steps out through the screech of the screen door, he hears her singing behind him: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the morn . . . "
And he and Christine cross the field of stars for the last time.
Awareness comes in patches, like glimpses though a dense fog. Ron feels many hands on him, the burn of the rope on his throat; he hears the crackling of leaves and sticks under bare white feet somewhere below. When his eyes flutter open he sees tree branches dissecting the night sky. Once he sees a star, a bright one. Might be the North Star, but he can"t tell. Then he falls back under, to a place even below dreams, a place of uneasy silence.
When he opens his eyes again, all he sees are green blades of gra.s.s. He sneezes and realizes some of them are tickling his nostrils. Must be what woke him. He also realizes the rope on his neck has gone slack. He raises his face slowly from the dewy gra.s.s, wincing as the muscles of his neck knot up sharply. His skin burns from the rope, and when he looks down at the gra.s.s, he sees little dots of his own blood.
At first everything is blurry. All his eyes can make out is shadow upon shadow. As a moment pa.s.ses, though, the shades of darkness differentiate. He sees trees arching grandly above him, forming the roof of a great, natural cathedral. A few feet in front of him is the utterly placid surface of what looks like a pond, reflecting the blackness of the sky like a great, dark mirror. Except it reflects no stars, and the moon, which hangs just over the treetops, is nowhere to be seen on its surface.
Now he sees white shapes. They form a ring surrounding the pond. The shapes become figures, young people, wearing white nightgowns. Their eyes are closed and their faces are as still and calm as the surface of the water they encircle.
Ron hears a voice and looks up. Next to him a man stands, his arms stretched wide. Bizarre, inhuman sounds emanate from his lips and fill the little clearing with chattering, bellowing, screaming, hissing. The old Ron, the one who was a preacher once in Mississippi, the one who was run out of town by his own congregation, would know these sounds for what they are: the man, the director, is speaking in tongues.
In one of his outstretched hands he holds the end of a rope. The other end is still looped around Ron"s neck.
Ron takes a deep breath, fighting to think clearly. He sees the sleepwalkers, the director, and the sheriff at his side, all facing the pond. All have left their backs to him, apparently thinking his lights would be out for quite a while. If he has a chance at all, this is it. He glances over and sees Margie next to him. She"s on her back. Her lips move as if she"s speaking, except no sound comes out. Her eyes are rolled back in her head with only the whites showing. She"s deep in shock. Her legs look like they belong in a butcher"s shop, and the puddle of blood she"s lying in must be an inch and a half deep. Her face is very pale; her breathing is so shallow Ron can"t see her chest moving. In another fifteen minutes, she"ll be dead. Whatever he"s going to do, he"ll have to do it alone.
Just as he thinks this, the babbling ceases and in a booming voice the director proclaims, "Bring forth the sacrifices!"
"John," says the sheriff, so quietly Ron can barely make out what he"s saying. "One of them-that lady, Lee-got away while we were dealing with the ones at the trailer. We"re going to have to get one more to make sixty-six."
The director, still in his clown makeup, steps up to the sheriff, a much larger man, and slaps him in the face as if he were a snotty child. He smiles.
"Never fear, the spirits will pick a replacement," he says. "Maybe . . . even . . . you!"
He steps away from the sheriff and opens his arms wide again, addressing the eerie a.s.sembly.
"Who will go?" he says.
Ron knows this is his chance. He slips the rope off over his head slowly, carefully, trying not to put any tension on the line and alert the director. There"s a moment of terror when the rope catches on his hook, but he"s able to pull it loose without too much wrangling. Finally, he"s free.
He glances once more at Margie, wishing he could help her, knowing he can"t, and looks up again. One of the gowned figures has stepped forward, a slender black kid with cornrows in her hair. The director looks at the kid and begins speaking tongues again.
Then Ron is on his feet running.
The edge of the clearing is only maybe ten feet away, and he"s shocked to see the Dream Center rising up just about twenty feet beyond that. From where he was lying, he was unable to see it. Now every perception comes to him with amazing clarity. He must dart between these two small trees, slip around that oak, then make it around the corner of the Dream Center. If he can make it that far without their noticing, he should be able to escape. His knees don"t hurt him now. He feels strong. He feels utterly free, as the ground races past him, and here come those trees. This is the victory he"s waited for his whole life. They won"t take him, no way, not Ron Bent. They"ll turn around and he"ll be gone. He"ll find Caleb and Christine, get some guns, come back and burn this old hospital into the dust. Here come those trees, and he"s shooting between them-now just pa.s.s the oak, get around the corner, and- First, his mouth snaps shut so hard he feels his teeth shatter. Then he sees his legs; they"ve miraculously shot out in front of him and hang suspended in the air for an instant. He hears something snap in his windpipe. Then he"s on the ground with a devastating thud. Trees spin around him like he"s on a carnival ride. And maybe that"s all this is, maybe that"s all life ever is, he suddenly thinks. After all, here"s a clown, looking down at him, snarling. There are some teenagers, hanging out. Of course, the teenagers" eyes are shut and the clown is holding the end of the noose that"s choking Ron"s life away.
These thoughts, these sights, spin around him. And he realizes in a flash that he was just jerked into the air, like a dog who chases after a kid on a bike, forgetting that it"s tied to a tree, and almost breaks its neck when he reaches the end of its chain. Except instead of a chain, it was the director"s la.s.so that got him. And unlike those tough, ol" dogs, Ron thinks, he might"ve actually broken his neck. He tastes blood in his mouth. His tongue sifts through shards of broken teeth. This head sings a one-note, droning song. And hands carry him to the water"s edge.
He watches out of the corner of his eye (turning his head would hurt too much) as the end of the rope around his neck is tied to a big cement weight. The sheriff loops some rope around Margie"s neck and ties her to a weight as well.
Margie is utterly still. Ron tries to find the words to pray for her soul, but can"t. All he can think of is the one-note ringing in his head. He can"t even hear the babbling of the director anymore.
And it"s kind of peaceful.