Excavation

Chapter 32

Audra…

She peered into the white clouds billowing up around her. The strange, shadowy flood had risen to just below her feet now. She’d climbed as high as she could up the tree; she knew that the branches above her would be too thin to support her weight.

Audra…

She wasn’t sure whether it was a real voice or words she was imagining spinning around inside her head. The water and wet fog distorted sound; her ears felt as if she were on a mountain high above sea level, the pressure building and pushing toward her inner ear.

Audra…

The voice was familiar, particularly when it whispered like that, so softly—soft like a snake slipping through mud. She strained her eyes, looking out at the fog, turning her head to see as much as she could, but still gripping the top branches firmly… mustn’t let go of the branches… they were all that kept her from the secret horrors below.

Audra…

The landscape up here was strange, like the landscape outside a plane window when it was flying above the clouds. Here and there the tops of trees jutted like church spires out of the discolored cloud. She could see the rest of the Big Andy off in the distance, but this horizon looked much different from the one she was used to. It could have been a completely different mountain she was looking at… the wrong mountain. She shook her head. To her north—at least she thought that direction was north, toward the old Taylor place, where Reed was, had been—the flood quickened; there seemed to be a lot of activity over there. And an incredible roaring.

Pieces of wood, light metal, leaves, and all manner of garbage. Some pieces like signs and old furniture touched something now and then in her memory, but she was too frightened to dwell on them much. Because they were drifting past her in the slate-colored water and white cloud, quickening at a certain point, then disappearing over the edge, at that place north of her.

Where the roar was.

Audra…

The whisper was coming clearer to her… his voice, but that could not be. Something touched her foot. She hadn’t even bothered to look down. She lowered her eyes.

Her father’s gnarled fingers were creeping spiderlike up her lower leg.

Audra…

She screamed and kicked. She caught one finger against the rough bark with her shoe and heard it snap like a dead branch. The others spasmed and curled and uncurled nervously like the legs of a wounded insect. She started laughing, then, recognizing the hint of hysteria in her voice, she bit her lip, hard, to make herself stop.

Audra… Softer now.

She’d have recognized the hands anywhere.

Touching her hair, clasping her arm—too hard—when he wanted to make a point, when he wanted her to give in to him. Submit. Her father’s hands. The rest of his body so weak-looking, sickly. His face so pale. Only his eyes and his hands ever showed color. The hands were ruddy, with large, gnarled ridges of skin over the knuckles, and a tracery of great blue veins down the back so that they looked like dead leaves or roots left too long in a damp place.

Touching her, running fingers up her leg. Audra…

He had given her the cafe to keep her near him, to keep her from going away with other men.

To keep her in his hands.

It made so much sense… Doris hadn’t been his favorite after all… it had been her. Audra.

She screamed and kicked and stamped and flailed at the hands. They shook, and the blood pooled in the palms, briefly, before washing over the knobby wrists and descending the emaciated lower arm. But still they persisted, bloodying the bottom cuff of her slacks as they pulled their way up her leg.

She kicked a final time before leaping from the tree reaching as far as she could for the next one, a slightly taller tree, larger branches, only a few feet away. She screamed as she fell.

The scream stopped, abruptly muffled as she dropped into the churning fog.

At the moment Audra was leaping from the tree, Joe Manors had just gotten the last occupant of Inez Pierce’s boarding house onto the roof of that old building. Including the sheet-wrapped corpse of Hector Pierce—Joe just couldn’t bring himself to leave Hector behind. Later, if there was to be a later, they might never have found the body.

There were eight of them left, all huddled near the middle of the roof, and all wide-eyed except Joe, who was much too tired for his fear to show. He wondered, with only feigned interest, if Old Man Pierce had built a strong roof. Certainly, it was going to be tested.

The dark waters rose rapidly, full of dark forms, hands reaching, faces straining with joy or agony, he couldn’t tell. And although earlier he had been able to make out individual identities among those inside the flood—not believing his own eyes even then, for some of the people he thought these were had been dead thirty years and more—he could recognize no one now, although he could see their faces quite clearly. They had lost their hair; their faces had been rubbed nearly blank. Death had made them all the same.

There were little girls, lots of little girls, and women, too, in the flood. But he couldn’t recognize any of them. If he ever survived this… he was going back to Cincinnati. Maybe he could still find them, be a father to his little girl again.

But there didn’t seem much chance of that. The boarding house was completely flooded; he heard the things crashing inside, felt the walls crumbling far below his feet. The roof rocked violently, making his stomach heave. Most of the men around him were crying. He’d have been crying too if he’d had a better grip on himself.

The roof buckled; several pieces floated away. A dark wave pushed itself over one side of the roof, like a solid thing, taking three of the men with it. Joe sprawled on the roof and made a grab for one of the salesmen. The man held on a moment, and he, too, had an expression somewhere between grin and grimace. It confused Joe; he wanted to scream at the guy. But then the salesman was gone, jerked out of Joe’s grip and washed over the side.

Then the roof was loose, completely detached from the Pierce boarding house, spinning away in the dark. Joe saw the last wall crumble behind them as the swift current suddenly shot them forward, away from Simpson Creeks. Debris was everywhere, flying in the wind and thrown by the waves. The men were screaming so loudly Joe thought his ears were going to bleed. He stared straight into a pitch-black wave that held the face of Amos Nickles, then Amos Nickles grew long shark teeth and rushed at him.

There was a crash as the dark wave descended.

A few minutes before the roof of Inez Pierce’s boarding house separated from the structure that had been the Pierce family home for almost a hundred years, and just as Audra’s last scream pierced the roar of the flood, Ben Taylor pulled up on the High Mountain Road across the hollow from his late brother’s home. Charlie and Inez were squeezed into the cab with him.

All three heard Audra scream. All three saw her fall into the fog and water. But at the moment none was moved to action. They were too entranced by the nightmare landscape before them. A landscape no one but a fool or a crazy person would have any eagerness to enter.

“That’s… impossible,” Charlie said. No one answered him. The impossibility was self-evident, but they had all seen the impossible become commonplace this evening.

The remains of the old Taylor place still stood as Ben remembered them, nestled in the middle of what had been a quiet valley. Behind that house, however, was the flood, rising up to the very top of the trees, but contained as if behind an invisible wall. It wasn’t a complete, break less wall, he could see; water leaked out of several spots and was snaking toward the house. And in other places, halfway up the border of trees, fingers and thumbs of water pushed their way out now and then, as if seeking escape. The area reminded Ben of an arena, like the Romans had, although whatever was holding the arena together, holding the water back, seemed to be weakening. He wondered how much time he had to get Reed out of that house.

He ignored the most amazing thing about this landscape, however, until he could ignore it no longer. Just south of the Taylor place was the cliff, almost completely shrouded by the fog; the tall trees bordering it—where he had last seen Audra—were almost completely submerged in the flood. But then, for a width of about a hundred yards, there was the largest waterfall he had ever seen in his life, dropping to the valley floor. Where the water just disappeared. It roared, however, roared like nothing he had ever heard, the sound increasing in volume and depth even as he watched.

He couldn’t make any sense of this at all. His first impulse was to turn the truck around and get as far away from this valley as he possibly could, ignoring all the objections he knew both Inez and Charlie would have. But this was impossible. This was unreal; there was no way to fight something like this. But more than that, there was something even scarier about this place, this waterfall, than anything else Ben Taylor had seen that night.

Somehow Ben knew, looking at the water leaking out of the forest behind the old house, watching the waterfall roar over the lip of forest and ghost-flood, disappearing when it touched the bottom, that this was a flaw, a break in the magic. Big Andy was waiting for something in that house to conclude. Then the water dropping down the fall would stop disappearing; the trees would let the wall of water escape. The flood would have full reign here, and his brother’s house would vanish beneath the waves.

“Look up there!” Inez shouted, and pointed.

A figure was struggling to the top of a tree near the cliff. Ben put the pickup in gear and sped down the road. If the Cliff Trail was still passable, they might just be able to get close enough…

Audra struggled to the top of the tree and clung there. Her clothes were ripped in long lines down her body. Her skin might be ripped, too; she couldn’t tell. She was so cold. Her eyes burned; she couldn’t see very well. She could be bleeding to death and not know. So she clung to the tree, whispering, praying, crying… all the same.

Her father almost got her… he almost had. But she’d gotten away; she’d been too smart for him. She giggled. He just didn’t know who he was dealing with. Never had. She’d felt his hands grabbing at her, pulling, trying to find something to hold onto, but she’d always slipped away. She was too smart for him.

But his nails had gotten to her. His fingernails. And those had cut her, wounded her bad.

From this tree she could see the waterfall. It was beautiful. The water just fell through the clouds, dropping to the ground far below. She wondered if there were lots of rainbows there. She wondered.

Over the lip of the waterfall she could see the Taylor place. She really needed to talk to Reed. It all looked very beautiful from up here. It almost made her want to let go, to let the water take her, to drift down to the valley below. To talk to Reed.

Maybe he really loved her after all.

Reed had been running through the house, trying to get away from the image of himself that stepped out of the darkened mirror. A false image. A lie. He didn’t think the house could be that big; it seemed as if he had been running forever. It had seemed that big to him when he was a child, of course; it had seemed enormous. When his father chased him he had run and run and had never been able to get to the right door. The house had been huge, and the doors impossibly far apart.

The dark, tattered image of himself, like an unfocused photograph, a self-portrait gone sour, didn’t run, but walked behind him, and yet had no trouble keeping up. Every time he looked back over his shoulder he was there, just a few steps behind.

Looking just like him… but darker, hungrier, with sharper teeth.

Here, Reed… here, boy. It seemed the entire house was whispering to him. I’m the one you came for… I’m the one you needed to talk to. Why don’t you stop and play?

Reed whimpered. The words struck a chord. He’d come back to face these things, he’d come back to face his family. But this. This he could not face.

You got to look at me, Reed. Look at what I… you’ve become…

“No!”

Reed! It wasn’t a whispering this time, but a thunderstorm inside the cramped rooms and hallways. Reed had never heard such anger, not even in his father’s voice. Reed! The wall to his left suddenly exploded. Roaches poured out and did a mad dance around his feet. Reed! The lamp in front of him rose into the air rapidly, smashing into the ceiling. Reed! A long spider-webbing of cracks appeared in the floorboards under his feet. He could hear the teeth grinding behind him. He could feel the hate like an intense heat, an electrical storm in the making.

When Joe Manors woke up, he thought at first he was back in bed at Inez’s, and this had all been a dream. There was sunlight here, and he heard birds singing. He struggled to his feet and looked up: the sky was clear overhead. He looked around him.

He was standing on the detached boarding house roof. He was alone; the rest must have been swept away. Except for a white-sheeted form tied securely to two lightning rods: Hector Pierce’s body.

The roof had run aground. And all around him… a calm lake, like one he might have liked going fishing on some time. There was no sign of Simpson Creeks, and none of the landmarks seemed at all familiar. He had no idea where he might be.

But there… a few miles away… he thought he recognized part of Big Andy’s flank. It was dark there, darker than any sky had a right to be. Thunder in the clouds. Bright lightning flashes.

Like the mountain was tearing itself apart in rage.

Reed! The floor buckled in front of him, throwing him headfirst into the wall. At the last moment he turned his shoulder and drove into the soft, moldy plaster. He looked behind him. Dark hands were gripping the door frame. Glistening, knifelike nails. Then they were splintering it.

Ben pulled the truck right up to the edge of the water, fishtailing slightly on the wet rock that capped the cliff there. He jumped out and stared across the expanse of water separating them from Audra. A good twenty-five yards. There was no way they could get to her.

He looked at Charlie. Charlie suddenly scowled. “We got to do something for her!” he shouted over the roar of the waterfall.

“Charlie…” Inez gripped his arm tightly, using his shoulder to shield her face from the spray. “There’s nothing we can do!”

Ben’s face grew hot with shame. Even now he was thinking of leaving the young woman, driving down there and getting his nephew out of that house before the flood let loose. But who could blame him? There was nothing, nothing they could do.

Audra screamed. They looked out through the flying mist. The tree was bending toward the water. One of her legs was already covered over.

“Dammit all to hell!” Charlie shouted, and jumped. Inez screamed. Ben started to jump in after his friend, but just stared, dumbfounded, as Charlie stood up on the water and began walking toward Audra… small, unsteady steps in that high wind, but progress just the same.

Then he saw what Charlie was standing on. Large sections of a house were floating just under the surface of the flood. Matt O’Riley’s house, if Ben wasn’t mistaken, swept away in that flood ten years ago. None of the O’Rileys had made it out alive.

The pieces were rocking; at any moment Ben knew Charlie’d be stepping on a rotten piece, or the whole thing would flip over on him.

But he’d made it almost to the tree. Audra was reaching out to him.

Reed bounded up the stairs to the attic, his shadow self chewing up the steps a few seconds behind him. Reed, you must talk to me… The anger and rage had gone out of the voice. There was just this coldness now, as if the whispered words might freeze his skin.

Charlie grabbed Audra and pushed her onto the floating slab of house. There seemed to be shapes in the water here, too… interested in her or him, he didn’t know. He pulled her to him—barely conscious, she seemed to weigh a ton—and they stumbled across the slippery surface of the boards.

Ben had backed his truck up so that the rear bumper faced the falls. He grabbed the bumper and stepped out into the edge of the flood, holding out his hand, coaxing Charlie closer. His friend looked dazed, ready to pass out. Ben slipped as the force of the flood pulling out to the falls increased slightly. Inez grabbed him for additional support.

Charlie and Audra were only a few yards away.

But Ben could see that the pieces of the O’Riley house were beginning to separate, leaving wide areas of dark water between them. Some of the sections were breaking apart and sinking.

It was dark in the attic, and Reed felt like a little boy again.

The sounds had been going on for a long time: scratchings, chitterings, creakings, that were so soft you wouldn’t know they were there unless you listened real hard. He hated it here. He was sick with terror.

Maybe it was a rat, a bat; or maybe a snake, or maybe one of those furry things Jim Leeman told him about that had the poisonous bite but usually chewed your head off before you could die of the poison—Reed had had nightmares for a week after Jim had told him about that one. Jim said they were all over this hollow, those furry things.

But he had to stay. It was the best hiding place he knew. And if Daddy caught him today…

Reed thought he could hear him bellowing down below, but no, no… that was just the blood beating in his own ears. He was so scared this time; he couldn’t remember ever being this scared.

The scratching continued… softly, softly. Then the whimpering started.

Reed listened closely, holding his breath. There was another kid up here with him. Crying.

The whimpering grew louder. Maybe his daddy had beaten this little kid too.

Louder. Louder. A sound like an animal… a calf, mewling. They’d had one hit by a truck one time and it had sounded just like this before Uncle Ben had took out his gun and shot the poor thing to put it out of its misery.

Suddenly Reed wished he had a gun right then. He’d help it; he’d put the poor thing out of its misery.

Then there was a change. The mewling became a growling. And Reed got real scared.

The house sections were separating, and Charlie could see it now, and that desperate look in Ben’s and Inez’s faces over there on the bank.

“Jump!” he shouted in Audra’s ear. She looked up at him uncomprehendingly. “Jump, girl, if you want to live!”

She jumped, and he gave her an extra push with all his might to help her on her way. He was satisfied that she had landed on some floating wood right in front of Ben’s outstretched hand when the momentum of his push carried him backwards and into the water.

He grabbed the tree Audra had been clinging to as he drifted past. That stopped him for a moment, but then the top of the tree broke off completely and he was suddenly rushing for the falls.

He still held on to the tree top. He wasn’t sure why.

The teeth were right in front of Reed, virtually glowing in the dark. The dark silhouette started breaking up the attic, throwing things around, sinking his teeth into things, chewing them apart, savaging them as Reed watched in fascination and horror.

Reed had never seen anyone so angry before, even angrier than his father. It both scared and thrilled him. Daddy shouldn’t have hit the little boy so hard. See what happened?

But the dark eyes, the bright teeth, were looking at Reed now. Reed jumped up and fumbled with the door that led to the roof. The dark little boy with the big teeth was almost on him when he got it open.

Reed climbed as fast as he could. The little boy roared behind him.

Ben held Audra and Inez to him. He was crying. He stared after Charlie, but Charlie wasn’t even looking at him anymore. He was staring at the edge of the falls, now only a few feet away.

Charlie watched as the two figures climbed up on the roof of the Taylor house. Two almost identical figures. But it was hard to tell from this distance. He figured that one of them must be Reed, but who was the other one? Could Joe Manors have come out here trying to save the boy, too? Charlie had always liked Joe Manors; he hoped he made it out okay.

There were more immediate concerns at hand, however. He was smelling lilacs. Not just any lilacs, mind you, but Mattie’s lilacs. He knew.

Charlie looked down over the approaching edge of the falls. It looked like you could see forever, forever down, that is. Charlie chuckled to himself. But he was still smelling lilacs. The foaming water was like thousands and thousands of yards of lace. Doilies. Embroidery. His Mattie had had a hand in all of this, yes indeedy. He would recognize her handiwork anywhere.

And as he looked over the edge, right straight down, he could see her face, shining up at him out of the water. Like she was taking a bath, her face well scrubbed and glowing so pretty. Smiling at him. And smelling so strongly of lilacs.

The worst thing about people dying on you was sometimes it seemed that they hadn’t even existed, and that they’d taken part of your own past with them when they died. Practically stolen it from you, Sometimes you had to spend the entire rest of your life trying to get those pieces back. Having to face those old ghosts again and again till you got things settled between you.

Charlie hoped his death wasn’t going to give anybody that kind of trouble. He sincerely did. He wished them all well.