Valley of Lights

TWENTY-SEVEN

I was aware of him crouching over me. I'd lost a minute or so somewhere. Now I was lying on the floor and my head and my shoulder hurt, and a bag of oats had split somewhere so close by that I wanted to cough on the dust.

'Don't shout too soon. Jack,' I heard him saying to the storekeeper. 'I may have messed up your display, but I just saved you from a robbery.'

And then I heard the ignominious sound of a revolver's hammer being cocked, just inches from my head. It had to be my gun, because my hand was empty. I heard the storekeeper say, 'I guess you did, at that.'

Groggily I tried to rise, and cat chow showered from my jacket. He was crouching by me and grinning, a hard-hewn mountain of a man who looked as if he'd. been carved from a single chunk of stone with a few uncorrected mistakes along the way. The deadly black 0 of the Colt hovered before me, but I looked over it and into his eyes. They were the eyes of the ghoul, regardless of the shell that they wore. And the time for playing around, they said to me, was over.

'Wait a minute,' a voice said from the doorway, and any hope that I may have had of him being distracted died with the brief flicker of a glance that he spared. I didn't have to look to know that it was Angela, and I didn't know whether to be grateful for this unexpected appearance, or what to feel.

She said, 'You're making a terrible mistake.' She was breathless, as if she'd run over. 'This man's a police officer working on a kidnap case.'

'And who're you?' the ghoul said, his eyes still on me.

'Angela Price, KTAR news. I'm kind of working with the sergeant, here. He was on his way over to see the sheriff.'

The weatherbeaten man stood up slowly, my own gun staying on me like a well-trained pointer. I could almost see his mind working, wondering where this new card in the deck might have come from and what she might mean.

And he said, 'Well, why don't the three of us go right over there together and sort this thing out?'

'That's the best way,' Angela said. She'd never seen this shell before, didn't relate him to Winter, and so saw no reason to worry. She took hold of my arm and helped me to get to my feet, saying, 'You took off in entirely the wrong direction, Alex. What did you think you were doing?'

I could have told her, but not in a couple of simple sentences. That would have been all the time I'd have had before we were out on the street again and the big man was suddenly switching the gun from me to Angela, grabbing her by the arm in case she should try to pull away.

'There you go, Alex,' he said easily. 'I reckon that this way you're less likely to try anything.'

Angela looked at me in astonished incomprehension, and then at the man, and then at me again.

'Oh, shit,' she said bleakly. 'What did I do?'

But I shook my head and briefly raised a hand to show that it was all right. She hadn't known, and couldn't have. And perhaps she'd even bought me a little time – not that I was feeling in much of a state to make good use of it.

'That was a neat piece of business on the phone,' the man said. 'Now why don't we all get in my truck and then we can go somewhere and talk about this?'

'Who's going to drive?'

'You are. Should I assume that you know the way?'

I walked across the street ahead of them. There was a breeze taking the edge off the sun's glare. He was walking Angela faster than she was really able to go, but she didn't say anything. I got in behind the wheel, and he pushed her in beside me. That way she was between us, and I'd have to reach across her if I wanted to try making a grab at the Colt. It couldn't be done, not even if I'd been feeling sharper and faster than I was now. I was feeling as if I'd had my head inside a big bell for the duration of the twelve o'clock chimes.

I had to force myself into some kind of focus as I started the truck and swung out in a U-turn to head back out of town. As we passed by the general store I could see the owner standing watching us from the doorway, a can of ham in each hand. I couldn't make out his expression because of the shade of the overhang, but I'd have bet that he was wondering what the hell was going on.

The ghoul had noticed it, too, because he looked back through the rear window of the cab and said, 'I suppose this means I'm going to have to move on again. But at least I'll know it will be for the last time.'

'I wouldn't bet on it,' I said, but under the circumstances my bravado sounded distinctly hollow, even to me.

But at least he didn't have Georgie any more.

The big man sighed happily, and said, 'Cocky to the last. I think that's one of the reasons why I'll be so sorry to say goodbye to you, Alex. You've been a pain, but you've made life a lot more interesting than it's been for a long time. I always looked forward to talking to you. I think that's probably what I'll miss the most.'

'Think how I'll feel,' I said. It was weird, listening to him like this. He should have seemed like a total stranger, but in spite of the body and the voice I'd immediately tuned in to the fact that it was the same personality that I'd been dicing and dealing with all along. I couldn't imagine what Angela must be making of it.

He nudged her and said, 'See what I mean?' And then he turned his attention back to me. 'I was going to tell you all kinds of things,' he said. 'Stuff that I've never told anyone else. You know that no two people ever see the world quite the same? The shapes and colors are always different, even the sounds. Took me a long time to get the hang of switching. There's a lot more to me than you ever really imagined, Alex. I'm not so stale, and I'm not so stupid, either. I mean, I really fooled you for a while with Michaels, didn't I?'

Michaels.

His body hadn't been anywhere in the house, and I hadn't even thought to notice the fact. Not even up in Georgie's loft, when I'd had to step over the video recorder that had most probably been looted from his den. I'd been starting to wonder whether I'd have the nerve, if a suitably big truck should appear heading toward us in the other lane, to swing us across into its path; but with a zombie still in reserve somewhere, it would be a wasted sacrifice. The bird would fly, the cycle would start again.

As it always had.

I said, 'I can't listen to much more of this. Why don't you kill me here, and get it over with?'

'I wasn't planning to kill you,' he said, making himself comfortable in the angle between the seat and the door. He was too far away for me to reach. 'I've got a much better use for you than that.'

I was turning from the highway onto the dirt drive when she did it, impulsively and without any warning; she grabbed at the wheel and gave it a hard wrench so that it spun out of my hands, and the pickup suddenly veered over to the right. I could see the mailbox coming, but I couldn't correct in time; the front of the truck simply smashed the post from under it as if it was so much matchwood, while the box bounced once on the hood and came straight up through the windshield and into the cab. I lost it completely then, because Angela had thrown herself over against me and the truck was onto the rugged ground beyond the shoulder, but I could see the mailbox behind her jammed into the cab at an angle like an unexploded rocket. Then we must have hit an even deeper rut, because the nose of the pickup dropped violently and I felt myself being pitched forward; and that was all that I knew for a while, until Angela was shaking me awake and I opened my eyes to that fierce and painful desert sky.

I was out of the truck, and flat on my back. I struggled up onto my elbows and said, 'Where did he go?'

'He's a mess, Alex,' Angela said. Her face was marked with little flecks of blood, probably flying cuts from the imploding windshield. 'His head's all messed up, he won't get far.'

'Which way?' I said.

'Up toward the house.' She tried to hold me down, 'What are you doing?'

'Got to finish it,' I said.

'Alex!' she insisted, as I managed to get on the move, seeing the house an impossible distance away across the field before me, 'For God's sake, let's go and get some help! The little girl's safe in my car!'

'Nobody's safe,' I said as I stumbled onto the dirt road that we'd left, but I don't think she heard.

About twenty yards further on I found my gun, lying where he'd dropped it. There was a gory smear on the ground close by, so perhaps he'd fallen. He had to be in quite a state, because he'd been right in the path of the mailbox. But thank God it hadn't quite killed him. I picked up the Colt and, with my other hand, wiped my eyes. I was feeling better, or I was kidding myself that I did; either way, I now felt more able to go on.

'Alex,' Angela said from beside me, 'you hardly know what you're doing. I'm coming in with you.'

'Whatever you like,' I said. 'But don't interfere.'

And she didn't; she stayed just behind my shoulder as we walked up to the front of the house and stopped under its blind, shuttered gaze. It must have looked good at one time, almost colonial, but someone had been letting it go for at least ten years, possibly more. The shape of the Colt was now feeling strange in my hand, as if it had been charged with the lives that it had taken and was hungry for more. How many, now? I'd actually lost count… but in a way it was none of my business, it was something between the gun and the ghoul, and I was simply a hapless intermediary who happened to have walked off the street and into the Paradise at the wrong time.

The main door of the house was now half-open, and I had a definite memory of pulling it closed behind me so that Angela wouldn't see the bodies inside. Well, she was going to see them now.

'Holy Jesus Christ on a bicycle,' I heard her say from the threshold behind me as I stood in the middle of the twilit hall and looked around.

'There's plenty more where they came from,' I said, waving her toward the sitting room as I tried to work out which way he'd gone from here. Not up the stairs, because the stuff of Georgie's that I'd dropped off at the bottom was undisturbed. Angela picked her way past me, stepping over the stick-legs of the outstretched dead like someone crossing subway rails, and put her head into the sitting-room. There was no arguing with it, she had nerve. I heard her breathe some expression of shock, but didn't make out what it was.

My guess was that he was making for the inert body of Michaels, his last refuge, but I couldn't think where he might have been keeping it. I'd searched the house pretty thoroughly, all the rooms and the cupboards and the closets, and if there had been any evidence of a cellar I'd have searched that, too.

'You already knew about this,' Angela said. 'And you didn't tell me!'

'I was saving the best for the last,' I said. I'd seen a bloody smudge just by the handle of the door which led through into the kitchen, so now I went over and, with the Colt at the ready, gave it a gentle push. It swung open onto a shaft of daylight, bumping on something behind. The far door of the kitchen, which gave out onto the back of the house, had been thrown wide. The heads of the four small bodies which lay under the table were only just into the light.

Angela said, with just a faint trace of shame that she'd probably get over, 'Do you think I can use the phone?'

'Try it and see,' I said.

I wasn't entirely unhappy that she was along, providing that she didn't get in the way. Right now her mind was probably racing, taking in this new information and hammering it out into a pattern which would include Bobby Winter and the man in the pickup and which would make more sense to an outsider than anything that I could invent. As for me, I only had one thing on my mind. I crossed the kitchen and went to take a look out the back.

And there he was.

He was down in the dust and making about three yards a minute at his current speed. He'd lost the use of his legs now and was scrabbling along like some badly chopped-about worm with a definite destination in mind. Ahead of him lay a big ramshackle barn or garage with a couple of outhouses tacked onto its sides, but he still had a way to go before he got there. In all my career, I don't think I've ever seen anyone so badly injured. A good piece of his head had to be missing.

I could hear Angela dialling when I stepped back into the house, and knew that she'd be tied up for a few minutes at least. At the foot of the stairs I picked up Georgie's pet-store box and said, 'C'mon, Hector, I've got a little job for you,' and the bird inside scuttled around a little. He didn't have much space in the box, but she'd probably let him out to fly around the room. When I returned to the outside the ghoul had put on a spurt and covered half of the remaining distance to the barn, but the futility of his best efforts must have been apparent to him as I overtook him and, with a show of what must have looked like sadistic courtesy, swung out the barn doors.

It was then that I saw that he hadn't only been stockpiling bodies, but vehicles as well; there were five cars crammed tightly into the big shed, and foremost amongst them was a white police department St Regis, unmarked.

Michaels was in the driving seat with his head back against the rest, looking as if he'd dozed off on duty.

So this was the ghoul's hole card, set up and ready for a getaway. I set the bird-box on its hood and looked in each of the other cars, but this was the only one with an occupant. The others looked as if they'd taken a few bumps and scrapes as he was hiding them away; the dents showed up as new scars except on Winter's Toyota, the one he'd called Joshua, where they simply blended in.

I turned to the ghoul. He seemed to have given up on the last few feet and had simply rolled over, exhausted, to rest with what was left of his head. propped, against the open barn door. The windshield glass appeared to have flayed most of his face away so that he'd actually come to resemble the image of malleable clay that I'd tried to create in my mind.

As I was opening the driver's door of the St Regis, I said, 'I suppose you realise that this was a bad move. You should have kept him in another place, another town altogether. But then, I can imagine you being scared out of the idea of another long journey the last time we did this.'

And then I crouched down and put my arm around Michaels' shoulders, and tipped him forward so that his head bent over the wheel. A few seconds passed, and then I could feel him shudder as he began the final stage of the drawn-out death process.

The ghoul was watching me with his one, bloody, murderous eye, too weak to interfere and too hurt to make the leap unaided. Only the ending of this body's life could release him, and right now he was like a man at the deck rail of a burning ship, watching the last of the lifeboats pulling away. Michaels was shivering hard now and I kept my arm around him, using his throes to help me resist any temptation to pity that I might feel for this broken creature on the ground before me. I had to remind myself that this mutilated shell was no more than a temporary habitation and that within seconds, given the chance, he'd be coming at me in another frame madder than any dog.

When Michaels was gone I gave his shoulder a final squeeze and then eased him back in the seat. From over by the door I heard a despairing groan, the first sound of any kind that the ghoul had made in the last ten minutes or so. I went and knelt down beside him and he looked at me, his eye a tiny pinpoint of fury that he hadn't the strength to express.

So here we were, one-to-one, and at last the ghoul lay naked and defenceless.

I said, 'You've made me do things a man should never have to do. I've seen things that no-one should ever have to see.' And as I spoke I was putting the Colt into his hand, smearing my prints to replace them with his own; and even as I was doing this he was weakly but gamely trying to pull the trigger on me, and the hammer fell on an empty chamber exactly as I'd set it. When I let go of his hand, it fell by his side. He didn't even have the strength to raise it again.

I thought he had maybe a couple of minutes longer, if he was lucky. It took everything he had to manage at last a faint, hoarse whisper.

He said ' No, Alex. Not this. Not to me.'

Perhaps it was the way he used my name, I don't know, but I felt a tug of something inside. Something that I knew I didn't dare pay much attention to. I said, 'I know, you're a strange and wonderful thing. But you never took a step without walking on somebody.'

' I didn't hurt the child. '

'No. But you would have, in the end,'

The glimmer in his dying eye told me that I'd spoken the truth, and that both of us knew it.

I leaned closer.

'I could let it end for you here,' I said. 'But there's something I want you to understand before you go.'