Hide and Seek

There was blood rolling off his shoulder and I saw it change suddenly

from a dark ooze to a bright arterial spray. And then he was more than

even my rage and hatred could contain.

He hit one side of the cave and then the other. The mouth foamed and

spilled. The useless hind legs began to twitch. Its howling chilled

me to the bone.

A moment later the massive head turned upward one last time. The mouth

opened and closed as though baying at the far unseen moon. Its head

moved slowly down. Its cloudy eyes froze like small round stones.

I went to Casey.

I had to crawl. My body was trembling with exhaustion and something

else, something close to shock. I felt myself moving in and out of

reality as though a drug were working in me. I would see her there

just beyond me, blue eyes open wide, lips parted. I'd see the tides of

red sliding over her body. And then she'd be alive and laughing at me

across a long white beach, she'd be upstairs in my apartment walking

slowly toward me, I'd touch her, smell her hair, her skin.

I'd feel the sea worn stones beneath my hands and knees and that would

bring me back. I didn't want to come back. I moved toward her. It

was slow and hard, like moving through deep water.

I had nearly reached her when I saw him standing there.

Ben Crouch.

He was tall, hard, powerful. His hair was long and matted as Mary's

had been. His beard was sparse, long in patches, almost nonexistent

elsewhere. The clothes were filthy rags, shapeless, torn. His arms

were bare. The muscles in them bunched and shifted as he clenched his

long yellow fingers into fists. I felt the strength of him. It was

like being in the presence of the dog again. It pulsed off him in

angry waves and crashed like breakers against the walls of the cave.

His small dark eyes played slowly across the room, over all of us

there, and then came to rest on me.

Casey's axe handle lay at his feet. He stooped slowly to pick it up.

His gaze never left me.

I had expected to see imbecility in his eyes. It wasn't there. I felt

him measuring me. His mouth was set in a thin taut line. Rafferty