And what would such a concerned citizen do? Call the sheriff, of course.
Malachi smiled, then sat down next to the phone and waited for the call.
***
Gabe lived right down the street, but Fran automatically went to her car. She was from Los Angeles, and no one went
anywhere
on foot in that city. Whether the travel was six feet or six miles, the car was the preferred – and sometimes it seemed like the only – method of transportation in the city of angels. Like most inhabitants of the metropolitan, Fran had despised the congested traffic of the city. But like most of her fellow Angelinos, she rarely thought to walk, as though entry citizenship in the city came only after a promise to travel exclusively by car.
John stopped her, though.
"No," he said. "Let’s walk."
She looked at him quizzically, then shrugged and nodded. It had been hard enough just getting John to agree to go to her cousin, though she knew he and Gabe were best friends.
When she had broached the subject of going to the coach for help, John shook his head. "I don’t want to," he said.
"We have to let him know what’s going on. Maybe he’s noticed something, too."
"Besides, that way I’ll have another person vouching for your sanity" were the words she
didn’t
say, but both of them heard them, nonetheless.
Still, John wasn’t going easily. "What if he turns on me, too?"
"He’s my cousin, John. And I didn’t do anything to you. Mental health is a genetic ailment that runs in my family."
So he agreed. But Fran didn't want to push her luck by insisting on driving, so now they were walking behind the four or five houses - spread out liberally across an area that in LA would have held several dozen - that separated her home from Gabe’s. Even in the midst of the dark night, even avoiding lights and sticking to the shadows that draped thickly over the Colorado landscape, Fran still had to marvel at the beauty of this place. Thick foliage sprouted from every available surface, evergreens predominating, sending their needled fingers high into the thin mountain air. They seemed to guard the landscape, subtly imposing yet also somehow comforting, conjuring up childhood images of Yuletide and fireplaces in the snow.
Below the trees, the ground was thick with grass and shrubs. It crackled softly underfoot as Fran moved forward, creating a pleasantly whispering noise that would have soothed her in other circumstances. Unfortunately, however, she was not on a nature hike. She was following a man who clearly feared for his life, though whether he was right to do so she could not yet say. She knew that she had strong feelings for John. They were surprisingly strong, in fact, considering the short amount of time they had spent together. But she had not felt such an instant kinship with anyone before. Perhaps not even Nathan, though she had loved him almost from the first moment they met. Did she love John? That was a question that she dared not answer. Not until she knew what was going on tonight. Not until she understood for herself what was making him so afraid; so furtive as he hugged the shadows and almost disappeared into the night.
That in itself was a skill that surprised her. John seemed to become little more than a shadow himself at times. He moved with a silence and ease that was almost spooky. Where Fran’s footfalls crackled and whispered as she stepped through grass and mulch, John’s movements could be followed only by sight. If she had closed her eyes, she could not have pinpointed his location. Even with her eyes open, she was hard-pressed at times to keep up with him. He was little more than a specter in the night, and as elusive and ethereal as any ghost. Though a city girl, Fran was aware that not everyone from the country could walk so silently through the night. John’s movements spoke of skill and training. She wondered where he had learned to walk like that, and what other secrets this man might hold.
About three-quarters of the way to Gabe’s house, John dropped suddenly to the ground, yanking Fran down with him.
"John, what’s –"
He cut her off with a finger to his lips. His eyes momentarily studied the house nearest them. Then he peered behind him, glancing at the other homes they had passed and the two or three still between them and Gabe’s place.
"See that?" he asked, pointing at the house next to them.
"I don’t see anything. It’s dark."
"Exactly. They’re
all
dark."
She looked around. He was right. "So, maybe they’re all gone. Or asleep." She knew it sounded weak, and didn’t believe it herself. Everyone on the same street gone? Where? There was no place to go
to
in Loston. Not at this time of night. Yet it was still too early for bed. Lights should have been on, sounds coming from the homes, perhaps even kids playing in lit yards. Instead, there was nothing. "Maybe just gone," she repeated quietly.
"No," whispered John. "They’re in there."
"Why would they be sitting in dark houses?"
"Because if it’s light inside you can’t see out the windows."
Fran looked at him in disbelief.
John nodded. "They’re looking for us."
He began edging farther away from the houses, staying low, heading for a small copse of trees that ran most of the rest of the way to Gabe’s house.
Fran wanted to laugh. She wanted to laugh and stand up and tell him he was being ridiculous. But she didn’t. Because she knew he was right. Something inside her knew that the silent houses were not empty, but filled with vigilantly attentive people. Watchers. How she knew this she could not say, but she knew. Undeniably and indisputably, she knew. She was being watched. Hunted.
The night, comforting and lovely just a moment ago, turned suddenly dreadful and weird, a lovecraftian landscape of hidden monstrosities. The trees were no longer guardians, but sentries, striving to divine her location and give her away to those who hunted her. The mulch that had whispered below her feet now seemed to shriek in pain, much too loud to be missed. Surely someone must have heard that, she thought with every step. Surely someone will come. Someone will find us.
They stayed in the trees the rest of the way, moving to Gabe’s house furtively, and the urge to laugh suddenly seized Fran, in spite of - or perhaps because of - the fear that still touched her neck with its icy talons. It was all so like a movie, the hero and heroine making their way slowly to the safe house, staying in the trees, hunched over to provide small targets.
The trees, gnarled and bent with the passing centuries, crowded around them. She remembered a movie, a scene from the Disney version of
Alice in Wonderland
where Alice got lost in a forest and saw strange creatures. To most, she supposed, the movie was meant to be amusing, a playful romp through a child’s imagination. To Fran, however, the whole movie had been an exercise in quiet insanity. And when Alice got lost in that strange, pastel-colored forest, Fran cried until her parents took her from the theater.
The thought was juvenile, and again Fran wanted to laugh, but a part of her also wanted to scream. To shriek until the fear she suddenly felt went away, driven out by sound.
She bit her tongue, though, and also bit down the hysteria that threatened to overtake her. It was all so like a movie. But she knew that this wasn’t mere cinema. John’s story was too much like hers. Too much like what had happened to Nathan, on that frightening evening years ago.
What was happening was real, and to take the night lightly would mean death.
So she played her part, and lamented that in this instance, the hero and the heroine had no guarantee of living through to the opening credits. Indeed, if what John said were true, the chances of survival were slim.
And
was
what he had said true? she thought. How could it be? What was going on?
Fran felt John’s hand on hers, and he tugged her in a different direction.
"Come on," he whispered.
She realized that, submersed as she was in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized their approach had ended: Gabe’s backyard lay before them.
They went to the house. Like the others on the street, it was black within: a looming beast with darkened eyes. The family homestead, so convivial and inviting when she had seen it before, now loomed before them and evoked fear and dread.
John went to the side door. He hesitated a moment, then knocked on the glass window that hung in the wall nearby. Even to Fran, the sound seemed strangely hollow, as though the sound waves vibrated not against air, but against some thinner version: something that carried nearly all the characteristics of the real thing, but wasn’t
quite
exact. But even though the noise was hollow, it seemed far too loud.
Again, she thought, Surely someone heard that. They’re going to find us.
Don’t do it!
she wanted to scream.
Don’t let him know we’re out here!
If she could have turned back the clock in that instant, she would have. She would have changed her mind and urged that John
not
go to her cousin. She didn’t know where she would have gone instead, but she felt a presentiment of doom that could not be dispelled by her cousin’s familiar abode. She looked at John, and the starlight glinting from above shadowed his face strangely. He looked like a skull, she realized, and again felt that sense of fearful destiny.
She was gripped by the belief – no, by the utter assurance – that John was going to die.
Then the doorknob twisted, and a dark form lurched out from the blackness within the house.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
8:45 PM MONDAY
Fran’s small cry of fear startled John on two levels. One was the immediate thrill that ran the length of his spine as the noise shattered the unearthly silence of the night. The other was the simple fact that she
had
cried out.
But it was no monster who lurched at them. Fran’s cousin stood in the doorway. The room behind him was dark and forbidding, a deep pool of black where nothing could be seen. The darkness shadowed Gabe’s face, making it hard to see his features. Still, John thought Fran should have known it would be Gabe standing in the doorway; should have realized that there was nothing to fear.
Unless she was starting to believe that John was right, and there really
was
something to be truly, deeply afraid of.
Gabe looked at them, his eyes catching bits of moonlight and reflecting them, miniature stars in the deep night of his eye sockets. For a moment John thought that Gabe didn’t recognize them: he looked slightly dazed and disoriented. He blinked rapidly, as though casting off the lingering cobwebs of sleep, and seemed somehow unsure.
Different.
Then the look changed and Gabe’s characteristic smile spread across his wide face. "John. Franny. What are you doing here?" John shrugged. Gabe’s smile disappeared. He looked more closely at them, at John’s disheveled clothing and Fran’s worried eyes. "What’s up, folks? You okay?"
"We’ve had better days, Gabe," said John.
Gabe stepped into the house, motioning them to follow him in. After a moment’s hesitation, John did so, still holding Fran’s hand. It felt good that she was there with him. It felt
right
. Or as right as anything could feel on this night where nothing was as it should be.
The room they entered was the laundry room. It wasn’t odd for houses in Loston to have such rooms, nor was it odd for them to be dark when no one was in them. John did find it odd, though, that Gabe had answered the door without switching on a single light.
When they stepped from the laundry room to the hall, there was still no light. The entire house was darkened, as had been all the other homes they had passed. The darkness pressed on John, weighing him down like one of his frequent nightmares. Only he knew he was not dreaming; that whatever this night held, it would be all too real. He could see shadowy forms through doorways and halls, dark outlines that he knew were just bookshelves and appliances, but that still filled him with dread and foreboding.
John forced a smile. "Why the gloom and doom, Gabe?" he said, trying to keep his voice casual.
"Just watching TV in the living room," Gabe answered. "Helluva news story on tonight." He laughed, but the sound was devoid of warmth. His voice was strained, as though he was trying desperately to seem normal through forced jocularity.
As Gabe had indicated, when John and Fran entered the living room, the TV was playing soundlessly. TV reporters gesticulated wildly as they spoke, and several police liaisons came onscreen as well. Whatever was going on, it seemed it was, as Gabe had said, a "helluva story." But no matter how strange, tragic, and frightening that story was, John knew it would not even come close to the events in
his
life that evening.
Helluva story.
Gabe shut off the TV, and for a moment they were all pitched into darkness. John tensed, and he felt Fran’s hand tighten on his own. Then the lights came up as the coach found a light switch and flicked it on.
"Cop a squat," said Gabe, gesturing at the couch.
Though he had spent several years with a daughter in the house, before her life was claimed by those crazies from California, Gabe’s home had been and continued to be the epitome of bachelorhood in the mountains. The furnishings consisted of a couch, a loveseat, and a La-Z-Boy recliner, all done in the same deep shade of red. Sports calendars rested on every vertical surface, placed between rifles and hunting trophies that hung from the walls. The entire space was festooned with signature proofs of virility and manhood, almost to the point of overkill.
Still, John usually felt at home in the place. It was the house of his best friend, and countless hours had been spent shooting darts at the board or playing pool in the basement. Tonight, however, nothing made John feel at home. Rather, he felt disoriented and dazed. Fran, seeming to sense his discomfiture, squeezed his hand encouragingly. Bless her, he thought. She might not believe him entirely, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to encourage him and try to keep him from being on edge.