The Fall of Never(81)
“Had me some feeling,” Graham said. With an unsteady hand, he clutched at a glass and poured himself some milk. His arms trembled.
“You had a feeling the detective was in danger?” Of course, he knew he was shooting at shadows: the old fool couldn’t really possibly know anything, could he? And even if he did, Graham Rand’s mind was so frazzled that it would probably require a team of top government cryptologists just to decode his rambling applesauce.
“I told you, Sheriff, but you just don’t want to listen.” The old man turned on him, faced him with impulsive tenacity. “Something’s going on around here and it ain’t good. Something in the woods. It got those three hunters and it nearly killed that little girl, too.”
Before Alan’s eyes, the room appeared to shake. He almost felt something click over in his head, like a puzzle piece snapping into place…but the feeling passed like a lumbering wave of nausea: there and then gone. There was still some anger left in him—irritation, really—but that was quickly being displaced with a strong and alien sense of urgency. It was a feeling akin to the anticipation he’d associated with Christmas mornings in his youth…only much darker.
No, not Christmas, nothing like that. It’s like being a child and sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, he quickly realized. It’s like sitting there knowing there is no place to run…and knowing damn well what is in store for you behind the doctor’s closed door…
Graham’s eyes appeared to soften. “And you feel it too,” he said. “Maybe just for a second there, right? I can see. Maybe it’s gone now but, goddamn it all, it was there, wasn’t it? Like something big about to fall from the sky and crush you.”
It was all Alan could do to regain composure. “Where is the hunting cap now, Mr. Rand?”
“Detective Raintree had it.”
“And the man you saw in the woods—could it have been one of the missing hunters, do you think?”
Graham tipped his narrow head back and barked a laugh at the ceiling. When he looked back at Alan, his mouth was stretched in a wide grin, his rotted teeth protruding from his gums like gnarled and twisted vines.
“Specters!” the old man howled, caught in the throes of hilarity. “Specters, Sheriff!”
“Mr. Rand—”
“You see,” Graham said, “you truly ain’t from around here, Sheriff. If you were, you’d know about this godforsaken weather, and you’d know that it happened this way several years back. The winter came early, the sky turned an evil dark, and hail the size of golf balls fell from the heavens. I felt it then, felt the wrongness of it all at the time, but didn’t know any better. Something evil was prepared to happen here those few years ago but, for some reason, it didn’t. Well now it’s back, and this time it’s damn anxious to happen. Damn hungry.”
Alan only stared at the old man.
“Winter came early to Spires once before, Sheriff,” Graham said. “And now it’s here again.”
After several moments, Alan made his way to the door.
Chapter Nineteen
From the eye of some remote nightmare landscape, Nellie Worthridge felt something immense begin to tug at her subconscious while she slept. Harassed by the manipulation of actual fingers—fingers that bent and twisted her mind, tore at the gray bands and sinews of her brain—the old woman felt her heart hitch, her chest heave, her pulse race, explode, then petrify with startling submission. Had she been awake, she would have made the immediate association between the influx of this grasping, new emotion and what was surely the imminence of her own death, yet such concepts held no relevance to her while she slept.
The feeling started as a faint breeze, pushing against her mind as if through the thicket of a forest. Yet hardly before she could even register its presence, its power multiplied almost instantaneously, and she could actually feel its freezing residence soak through the pores in her skin and throughout her entire body. The sheer magnitude of the holocaust rendered her docile and useless. Yet it could reach only her mind—and somehow, even in her dream-state, the old woman recognized this and saw it for what it was: not a threat at all, but the strengthening connection of lines, of walking mental lines, of the steady-steady, the walk-run.
Diffused throughout her body, the power shook her. There was a jarring sensation—inexplicable at first account, yet a second later it presented itself as the jarring of one mind into another: a cry for help piercing the silence of a long hallway, stopping only when it is able to attract the ears of someone capable of interpretation. And for the briefest of moments, Nellie Worthridge was aware that she could stand, that she had legs and could actually stand, and that she was no longer herself— (someone else’s mind I am in someone else’s mind or they are in mine)
—and no longer confined to her handicap. Bright swirls of colors blossomed before her and she saw these colors not with eyes—do we dream with eyes?—but with unexplained harmony and unity throughout her entire being. The colors capered and flared. Some grew fantastic and intense while others simply dissipated like a candle flickering out in the dark. The incredible surge from these colors created a membrane across her mind, something almost tangible and susceptible to physical manipulation, and behind the membranous screen were images and flickering pictures. Memories, she thought. But not hers. Someone else’s.