The Night Parade(114)

“You just stay up there,” she instructed him.

“Shoot the tires out of their cars so they can’t follow us,” Kahle told her. “I don’t want to take any—”

Kahle stopped suddenly and froze in midstride. Then he looked down at Ellie’s hand, which was gripping his own so tightly now that the tips of her fingers had turned white.

“You’re—” Kahle began.

Fear ghosted like a quick shadow over his face. He tried to jerk his arm away from Ellie’s grip, but she did not release his hand. For a split second, it was as if Kahle was fighting off a laugh, or at least a smile . . . but then something changed, and that laugh, that smile, never came. Instead, his mouth stretched to an impossible length, as though his jaw had become unhinged, and then there was the sound of a teakettle whistling on a stove top. It took David a moment or two to realize that sound was coming from Kahle.

And then Aaron Kahle began screaming.

Gany spun around. Beside the open door of the SUV, Bandanna stood, trying to comprehend what was happening.

Ellie reached up and placed her other hand on Kahle’s forehead.

“Hey!” Bandanna yelled, though he looked suddenly terrified and did not move away from the vehicle. “Hey! Aaron, what’s—”

Kahle began thrashing his head from side to side, though whether this was to loosen Ellie’s grip on him or simply out of sheer pain, David could not be sure.

Bright red blood burst from Kahle’s right nostril. A second later, crimson tendrils spilled out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. The high-pitched keening that was emanating from his throat suddenly took on a wet, clotted sound before dying out altogether.

Ellie kept her hand firmly against Kahle’s forehead, her other hand still clutching one of his, as Kahle dropped to his knees. He was shrieking and tearing at his hair now, his eyes rolled back to their whites. Blood whipped from his nose and spattered across Ellie’s face.

She didn’t even blink.

Gany suddenly broke her stupor and ran toward Kahle and Ellie. At the same time, Bandanna peeled himself off the SUV and took a few timid steps in their direction, too.

David sprung up and jumped over the porch railing.

Gany reached out, grabbed Ellie’s wrist, and tried to wrench the girl’s hand off of Kahle’s face. A second later, Gany withdrew her hand, recoiling as if shocked by a jolt of electricity. Ellie whipped her head around to watch Gany take a step backward, a look of abject horror now etched across Gany’s face.

Suddenly, the air was sucked from David’s lungs again. He froze, his sneakers skidding in the dirt. His flesh began to tingle.

Ellie released her hold on Kahle; the second she did so, Kahle’s body dropped face-first into the dirt. She turned and clamped both hands overtop Gany’s, which were still clutching the shotgun. Gany screamed and the shotgun went off, blowing a crater into the earth at their feet. She tried to wrench her hands free, but Ellie wouldn’t let her go. She fell quickly to her knees while simultaneously throwing her head back. Her screams became operatic, taking on a frequency David would have thought impossible for human vocal cords. Blood began streaming out of Gany’s ears.

A second gunshot rang through the air. David turned and saw Bandanna firing his pistol at Ellie. He was shooting erratically, his face full of terror. David rushed him, and Bandanna swiveled and got off one more shot before David collided with him and they both went crashing to the ground. The pistol exploded again, the blast so close to David’s left ear that all sound was instantaneously sucked out of the world. Bandanna struck him in the face, knocking him onto his side in the dirt. David rolled over and climbed to his feet, the absence of sound quickly replaced by a shrill, sonorous whistle. He tripped over his feet and fell backward onto the ground, his teeth gnashing together in his skull.

Bandanna loomed above him, a shifting silhouette against the row of floodlights that now partially blinded David, a silhouette that swung its pistol toward him. Faintly, over the ringing in his ears, David heard the roar of a gunshot . . . and in that same instant, his attacker’s silhouette was swept away from the floodlights. David felt no pain.

(sleep you can sleep you can fly you can sleep)

(so cold)

Consciousness threatened to leave him, but he fought to hold on to it. There was nothing but the burning stench of gunpowder in the air, the blinding floodlights that were rapidly pixelating, and the incessant tonal ringing at the center of his head. Even when the smell of gunpowder faded and the floodlights turned dark, he could still hear that ringing, ringing, ringing.





60


He wasn’t sure if he ever truly lost consciousness, though he was aware of his senses rushing back to him at one point, so he must have been close. He smelled the burning early morning air and heard the ringing in his ears. He sat up and saw a dead man with a red bandanna askew on his head not two yards from him, a gaping, sodden wound in his chest.

David crawled to his feet and stood there, wavering like a drunk.

Ellie stood facing him, her eyes wide, her lower lip trembling. She held her arms away from her body, like a child pretending to have airplane wings, and there was blood on her nightshirt, her arms, her face. She wore no expression, as if a part of her mind had fled during the melee. Only her eyes showed any sign of life—two blazing orbs that seemed to be seeing everything and nothing all at once.