Son of the endless night, p.8
Son of the Endless Night, page 8
No furniture. A tarnished ceiling fixture, wreckage of drapes over the French doors to the balcony.
Rich turned again, encountering Melka's skeptical stare.
"I— this— it wasn't like this! The room was clean and warm. And there was a bed"— he aimed the flashlight again— "there, next to the wall. With a table beside the bed. One of those little Sony TV's on it. A tray of food— but she hadn't eaten much. And there was a— a patchwork quilt on the bed. Orange and blue. Flannel sheets. Polly was wearing a tweed skirt and a ski sweater. This— this isn't the room, then, I must be— "
"Next door," Melka rumbled. "Mr. Windross?"
Windross sighed and obligingly unlocked another room for them. It was in much the same condition as 331: gutted, blackened, barren. A few other doors along the hall were unlocked at random. Windross stood waiting, hands deep in the pockets of his corduroy coat, chin on his chest as if he had fallen asleep, while Rich darted from room to room.
Belatedly he remembered something important. "Come here," he shouted to Melka. "I'll show you how I got out. I used one of the sheets from Polly's bed!"
He led them to the room with the hole chopped in the floor. Rich's face was flaming, but the rest of him was prickly cold. The new shock barely made an impression physically, just kicked his heartbeat higher for a few seconds.
There was no trace of the flannel bedsheet. His footprints in soot lay all around the jagged hole in the floor. It was like a devastated wishing well, as if in a fairy tale that had no happy ending.
"Do you have an explanation?" Melka said to Rich, his tone not exactly unfriendly. But he wasn't pleased with the way it was going.
"No." Rich slumped against the wall outside the room, breathing noisily through his mouth. "I was— here, you can see that. Those— are my footprints. But I didn't jump. I knotted a bedsheet, I swear— "
Melka nodded patiently.
"I— I just don't understand— what they could've done with Polly."
He roused himself and borrowed Stefanie's flashlight again. He brushed past Windross, who raised his head and stared at him. Darkness and ill will bled from the landlord like ink from a cuttlefish.
"Now where are you going?" Melka asked sharply.
"I'll find something to explain this! Wait."
He reentered room 331, the beam of the flashlight traveling from corner to empty corner. Melka's own flashlight doubled the gliding parabolas, spreading thin Rich's headless shadow on the dark brown walls. Windross began to complain, his voice rising. Rich continued to turn randomly, his ragged breathing becoming sobs as he gave in to despair, and the fear that he was going mad.
Suddenly he sickened, began to choke and gag. He stumbled out into the hall, spewing vomit, and fell to his knees.
"Oh my God, what's the matter?" Stefanie asked.
Rich looked up at her through watery eyes. "That odor! Don't you smell it?"
"What odor?" Stefanie went to the doorway, leaned in, sniffed audibly.
"Rotten— putrid— like decaying flesh." Rich heaved again, bringing up a trickle of vile liquid.
"He's a lunatic," Windross said to Melka, waving his hands for emphasis. "Can't you understand that? I've cooperated— now why don't you do something about him, punish him! He had no right to disturb me this way, make accusations, destroy my peace of mind!"
Rich lunged up, blindly intent on tearing Windross's head from his shoulders. Melka smacked him hard on the back of the skull with an open hand before Rich could touch the innkeeper. Rich went sprawling. Melka turned the beam of the electric torch full on his face, immobilizing him.
"Calm down, Richard, before you let yourself in for a whopping lawsuit."
"Me!"
"I don't want to sue him, what does he have? I just want him to get out of my inn! Leave me alone!"
Melka offered a hand to Rich and pulled him to his feet. "Did I hurt you?"
Rich rubbed the back of his head resentfully. He was black all over and sticky from vomit; he couldn't stop gasping from the charnel odor that had filled his nostrils.
But the blow had helped to restore his equilibrium, his dogged faith that he would be able to prove what he knew was true. Polly had to be here— somewhere. All he needed was more time. He would search every room.
"I didn't smell anything," Stefanie said, with a glance at Rich and a shrug to indicate she might be sorry.
"Oh, hell, let's get out of here," Melka told them.
"Wait— there are dozens of rooms we haven't— "
"Richard, let me say this to you very sincerely: I'm about thirty seconds away from riding you down to the jail and letting you study this matter, this obsession you've got on your mind, in a holding cell for the next day or so."
"But I'm telling you the— "
"Boy, I really do think you have a problem of some kind. What it is, I couldn't hazard a guess. I do recommend that you sort it out far away from my jurisdiction. Now, Mr. Windross has requested that you pack up and go. Do that. Stefanie will stay with you until you're ready. Don't come back."
Richard leveled a Finger at Windross. "He knows— believe me, he knows everything! He's hiding Polly. Ask him!"
Windross looked astounded and aggrieved. Melka tapped Rich on the point of his right shoulder with the barrel of his electric torch. Rich realized, despite his agitation, that he was about to plunge through very thin ice. He shut up.
"I want to lock up," Windross said. "Is that all?"
"Unless you'd care to file a formal complaint against Mr. Devon."
"I only want to forget about the whole thing," the innkeeper said wearily, with a last, seemingly incurious look at Rich before Stefanie took him away.
Stefanie allowed Rich time to shower. While he was in the bathroom she made an illegal but thorough search for controlled substances, found none.
In the steaming shower Rich scrubbed himself furiously to keep from going numb all over; he fought a lassitude that threatened to become a blackout. By concentrating on Polly, the reality of her touch, her tears, he fanned his anger to a consistent glow, and kept his bearings; the thin potential of a resolve to return, and find her.
After his shower he dressed; his hands were almost as useless as rocks, and he still trembled. He was unable to draw a decent breath without reviving the sickening odor that had staggered him in room 331: every cell of his body seemed saturated with it. Dimly he recognized hysteria. The disgusting slashes on Polly's body had smelled, faintly, of corruption: anxiety had exaggerated this shock into an olfactory horror.
"Time to move on," Stefanie advised him.
"Sure," Rich said bitterly.
Outside he paused to look at the deserted wing. A dark cloud was transiting the moon. In his mind it took the shape of a panther's head, turning; its baleful yellow eye blotted reason. He coughed and gasped and, with his tender face feeling numb again, got into his Porsche.
Everything about the interior was distantly, unimportantly familiar to him: the worn leather covering on the steering wheel, the sheepskin seat covers, the old St. Christopher medal dangling from the rearview mirror. Yet he couldn't remember how to operate the machine. He rolled up the window, traceries of frost on the glass. Stefanie's watchful face was dimmed as if by extreme old age. Everything was waxworks now. No sound. In this void he fumbled for keys. The rough edge of the ignition key elicited a mechanical response. Key in the ignition, turn; press the accelerator. The engine started. The booming, flatulent sound of exhaust returned him a little nearer to reality, though he still seemed mysteriously divided into two people, one of whom was dreaming the other. As he put the car into gear and backed away from the motionless Stefanie, Rich felt himself slipping back into the ruined wing of the inn, roaming the blackened rooms, his movements slowed by the horror of Polly's inexplicable absence.
But she had been there. Been there! The familiar, faded blue eyes. The lips he had kissed. No mistake. Her fingers clutching his arm. He heard her crying for him now, a scalding lament, as he drove slowly away from the inn, defeated, lamed by some ungodly magic. Don't leave me, Rich! Her voice sounded so real, he was wild to look back— but it was all he could do to hold the road, he was in tears himself.
(You're not crazy)
he assured himself. (Whoever they are
they pulled one on you.
Windross in on it. Took Polly out of there, changed the appearance of the room somehow. But they can't hide her forever:
forever:)
On the outskirts of Talbot, a college town seven miles down the road, he was attracted by a roadside tavern sign shimmering blue in the night. A stiff drink. Yes. Snap out of it. There were a few cars in the steep parking lot. He pulled up in front of the door and went in.
It was a popular watering hole, but late for crowds. All the odors and trappings were reassuring. (I'm not crazy. Think this through. God's sake find an answer.) There was a collection of barflies beneath the TV at one end of the bar; a couple of women negotiating the dangerous curves of forty with their horns blaring; a scattering of quieter, younger couples around the big room. He bought cigarettes from a machine, settled in an empty corner booth as far from the bar as possible. There was an octagonal window just above his head, facing the Post Road. The lone waitress working the tables wore jeans and boots, a paisley neckerchief. He ordered Jameson's. His hands trembled so he kept them out of sight, beneath the table. A fierce headache had set in.
For the first time in hours Rich thought about Karyn and, guiltily, he remembered their dinner date. What was the name of the fucking place where they were to have met? That he couldn't remember Londonderry, she'd said. He looked at his watch. After eleven. Londonderry was a good half hour to the north. The restaurant would be closed by now. No use trying to call, even if he could think of the name. He would just sit here awhile, try to pull himself together, achieve a mental groove that would enable him to think this thing through.
Rich drank the first whiskey in a couple of gulps. Bad form, but he wanted quick results. He seldom drank liquor, having profited from the examples of his father and several close relatives, who had been laid to rest with devastated livers while a few prime years remained. But just as he sometimes needed pot, there were hardship occasions that called for whiskey. He motioned to the waitress and ordered a double.
15
"You mustn't interfere," the woman said softly.
For a few seconds Rich wasn't sure anyone had spoken to him; his head, bagged in a rarefied substance not unlike cotton candy, lolled above the nearly empty tumbler on the table in front of him. He had been studying the intricate sparkly tangle of the design in the Formica tabletop, likening it to the best work of Jackson Pollock. An amazing discovery, in a nowhere bar in the wilds of Vermont.
He looked up, mouth agape. Holding his head in this new position unbalanced him, and he nearly toppled sideways in the booth. He clutched the edge of the table, blinking, trying to bring her into focus. The barroom was on the move, whirling slowly, tilting like an unstable carousel. ZZ Top on the jukebox. "Gimme All Your Lovin." He licked his lips. They were dry from cigarettes and the several potent whiskeys he'd knocked back in less than an hour. He was barely aware of the other customers in the bar. He felt detached from humanity, like a tired cuckoo sprung from a rundown clock.
She came a little closer to the booth, stood just beyond arm's reach. She was tall and severely dressed, in black or midnight blue. Sweater, skirt, boots. Her only ornaments were diamonds in the lobes of her ears and a shiny sickle scar low on one cheek.
"What did you say? Who are you?"
"My name is Inez Cordway. We almost met last night. I decided at the last moment it would serve no useful purpose. That, I believe, was a mistake."
He touched his own cheek, sketching with a fingertip the mirror image of her scar. She nodded.
"Yes. That was me. With Windross."
"Mother of God."
She replied with a cool, tolerant smile. "You've had quite a time for yourself tonight."
"Tell me about it." Anger brought Rich to near sobriety for a few seconds. He started to get up. "You. You must know where Polly is!"
She stopped him with only the slightest of movements, a tilt of the head which in turn revealed a glimpse of something unnerving in her eyes; her gaze could be as strict and unforgiving as an adder's bite.
"It isn't just Polly anymore," Inez Cordway said.
Rich slumped on the bench seat, breathing hard, all but choking on backed-up fumes of alcohol. The corner they occupied seemed withdrawn from the rest of the barroom, at the wrong end of a telescope and bathed in St. Elmo's fire. His ears, his forehead, smarted. His fingernails glowed on the tabletop. His eyes, straining, lost focus; the woman faded from substance to angular shadow. But her voice was dismally clear.
"The child is fully possessed by a demon. Perhaps more than one demon. That isn't certain yet. The rites have only just begun. It could be weeks before we know exactly what we're dealing with."
The raw taste of whiskey spurted into Rich's throat; he clapped a hand to his mouth. Some of the liquid trickled through his fingers.
"You've had too much to drink," she said dispassionately. "But getting drunk is certainly not the worst thing that could have happened to you tonight."
Unexpectedly Rich began to cry, low against his chest, in frustration and fury.
"What the hell do you mean— it isn't Polly? I saw her— I talked to her!"
"Yes, I know. In room 331 of the inn."
"When I went back she wasn't there! What did you do with— "
"Listen to me." She leaned a little closer; the movement revealed, suddenly and unpleasantly, too much of her face to him. He was aware of a high-style gleam of gold encasing several teeth, her dark eyes astringent as cloves.
"Polly was never there. She has not been at the Post Road Inn for more than five weeks."
"You don't know what you're saying!" He felt his heart knocking; he mustered a threat. "But I'm going to find out what this is all about."
"Let me assure you of one thing. Polly— the host Polly— is in a safe place. She is loved, protected, peaceable— for the time being. We have a chance to redeem the child— safeguard her immortal soul. But I say again: you must not interfere."
"Interfere with what?"
She drew back; she achieved magisterial height.
"The exorcism."
Rich tried, too quickly, to get up; he was blocked by the edge of the table and sat down again. Faintness, heaviness; his brain half-stunned, lying at the edge of a vast darkness like an animal hit in the road.
"I want to see Polly!"
"You will do her, and all of us, a very great favor if you forget about her. You can't help."
"If Polly isn't— wasn't— at the inn, what were all of you doing there last night?"
"Strict obedience to the ritual requires a visit to the site of the possession, if it is known."
"Possessed? How do you know she's— God damn it, who are you?"
"I've told you my name. I have spent much of my life dealing with Satan. Oh, I am very sure. That's why I've come to tell you to leave us alone. It's obvious that you're much too susceptible to Polly. The demon knows that, and is already using you. This could become extremely dangerous. Please believe what I'm saying. You should go home at once."
Inez Cordway turned and, in the mists of his vision, was quickly under way, a dreadnaught on a dark outgoing tide. Her departure was so abrupt, it seemed a conjuring trick in reverse. One moment she was standing over him, formidably knowledgeable about things that refreshed the terrors of his youth; the next she was gone.
The barroom was still in motion, but not as disconcertingly as before. Rich levered himself up and out of the booth, swayed, willed himself to stand erect, fished a thin wad of bills from his pocket, and threw down on the table what he thought was a twenty. Then he went after the woman.
16
The black Cadillac was pulling out of the parking lot onto the access road when Rich emerged from the tavern. The flash of cold air in his lungs revived him, as if someone had taken a point-blank shot at him. Adrenaline followed, giving him a false sense of sobriety, but his reflexes were sluggish. He banged a hip painfully against another car getting to his Porsche. Behind the wheel he turned his head frantically, trying to keep the old Cadillac in sight while he started and encouraged the balky engine.
By the time he had backed out of the inclined parking lot, Inez Cordway had disappeared eastbound along the road to Talbot.
Rich gunned the Porsche to fifty. Only about half a minute had gone by; he knew he would catch up to her in a matter of seconds. The Porsche shot over a hill and around a tight curve. No traffic in either direction. Just ahead he saw a blinking red traffic light: a four-way intersection. Rich groaned in frustration as he down-shifted to a crawl.
He could see perhaps half a mile up the road he was traveling, to the lights of the village. His vision was a little swarmy but his view of the road was unobstructed; and he could see well enough to distinguish the unique high tail-lights of the Caddy, if she had gone into Talbot. The only moving vehicle in that direction was a pickup truck with a snowplow attachment; it was coming toward him.
Two choices.
Rich made an instant decision and twisted the wheel to the left, sped north along narrow twisting blacktop, past rock walls nearly buried in snowbanks, isolated homes and woodlots that crowded the road. He was half sick from momentum and the whiskey he'd drunk, cold and sweating at the same time. He pushed his speed to the limit of recklessness, where any little problem would mean trouble: there was always unexpected ice on the best-plowed roads, wildlife, a slow-moving car with dim lights hogging the centerline.
Just as he decided he'd made a wrong guess, and was starting to slow down. Rich came over the crest of a hill to an unmarked, unlighted intersection, and the end of the road he was on. Snow from several plowings formed a six-foot-high wall around the thick trunks of birch trees. If he hadn't already had his foot on the brake he would have smashed head-on with undiminished speed into the snow and the trees. Instead, braking too hard, he spun around twice into the intersection and hit the snowbank broadside. The well-packed snow provided enough of a cushion to keep the Porsche from crashing into the trees.
