Night Shift(119)

We looked down. We were in a kind of dip here, and most of the wind went right over our heads. And you could see two sets of tracks, one large and one small, just filling up with snow. If we had been five minutes later, they would have been gone.

He started to walk away, his head down, and Tookey grabbed him back. 'No! No, Lumley!'

Lumley turned his wild face up to Tookey's and made a fist. He drew it back . . but something in Tookey's face made him falter. He looked from Tookey to me and then back again.

'She'll freeze,' he said, as if we were a couple of stupid kids. 'Don't you get it? She doesn't have her jacket on and she's only seven years old -'

'They could be anywhere,' Tookey said. 'You can't follow those tracks. They'll be gone in the next drift.'

'What do you suggest?' Lumley yells, his voice high and hysterical. 'If we go back to get the police, she'll freeze to death! Francie and my wife!'

'They may be frozen already,' Tookey said. His eyes caught Lumley's. 'Frozen, or something worse.'

'What do you mean?' Lumley whispered. 'Get it straight, goddamn it! Tell me!'

'Mr Lumley,' Tookey says, 'there's something in the Lot -'

But I was the one who came out with it finally, said the word I never expected to say. 'Vampires, Mr Lumley. Jerusalem's Lot is full of vampires. I expect that's hard for you to swallow -He was staring at me as if I'd gone green. 'Loonies,' he whispers. 'You're a couple of loonies.' Then he turned away, cupped his hands around his mouth, and bellowed, 'FRANCIE! JANEY!' He started floundering off again. The snow was up to the hem of his fancy coat.

I looked at Tookey. 'What do we do now?'

'Follow him,' Tookey says. His hair was plastered with snow, and he did look a little bit loony. 'I can't just leave him out here, Booth. Can you?'

'No,' I says. 'Guess not.'

So we started to wade through the snow after Lumley as best we could. But he kept getting further and further ahead. He had his youth to spend, you see. He was breaking the trail, going through that snow like a bull. My arthritis began to bother me something terrible, and I started to look down at my legs, telling myself: A little further, just a little further, keep goin' damn it, keep goin'...

I piled right into Tookey, who was standing spread-legged in a drift. His head was hanging and both of his hands were pressed to his chest.

'Tookey,' I says, 'you okay?'

'I'm all right,' he said, taking his hands away. 'We'll stick with him, Booth, and when he fags out he'll see reason.'

We topped a rise and there was Lumley at the bottom, looking desperately for more tracks. Poor man, there wasn't a chance he was going to find them. The wind blew straight across down there where he was, and any tracks would have been rubbed out three minutes after they was made, let alone a couple of hours.

He raised his head and screamed into the night:

'FRANCJE!JANEY! FOR GOD'S SAKE!'

And you could hear the desperation in his voice, the terror, and pity him for it. The only answer he got was the freight-train wail of the wind. It almost seemed to be laughin' at him, saying: I took them Mister New Jersey with your fancy car and camel's-hair topcoat. I took them and I rubbed out their tracks and by morning I'll have them just as neat and frozen as two strawberries in a deepfreeze . 'Lumley!' Tookey bawled over the wind. 'Listen, you never mind vampires or boogies or nothing like that, but you mind this! You're just making it worse for them! We got to get the -'

And then there was an answer, a voice coming out of the dark like little tinkling silver bells, and my heart turned cold as ice in a cistern.

'Jerry. . . Jerry,

is that you?' Lumley wheeled at the sound. And then she came, drifting out of the dark shadows of a little copse of trees like a ghost. She was a city woman, all right, and right then she seemed like the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I felt like I wanted to go to her and tell her how glad I was she was safe after all. She was wearing a heavy green pullover sort of thing, a poncho, I believe they're called. It floated all around her, and her dark hair streamed out in the wild wind like water in a December creek, just before the winter freeze stills it and locks it in.

Maybe I did take a step towards her, because I felt Tookey's hand on my shoulder, rough and warm. And still - how can I say it? - I yearned after her, so dark and beautiful with that green poncho floating around her neck and shoulders, as exotic and strange as to make you think of some beautiful woman from a Walter de la Mare poem.

'Janey!' Lumley cried. 'Janey!' He began to struggle through the snow towards her, his arms outstretched.

'No!' Tookey cried. 'No, Lumley!'

He never even looked. . . but she did. She looked up at us and grinned. And when she did, I felt my longing, my yearning turn to horror as cold as the grave, as white and silent as bones in a shroud. Even from the rise we could see the sullen red glare in those eyes. They were less human than a wolf's eyes. And when she grinned you could see how long her teeth had become. She wasn't human any more. She was a dead thing somehow come back to life in this black howling storm.

Tookey make the sign of the cross at her. She flinched back . . . and then grinned at us again. We were too far away, and maybe too scared.