Horace pulled back to look Elton in the eye. He appeared more together somehow, having been given the gift of a concrete direction he knew could be achieved. Elton wished to hell someone would hand himself as much.
As Horace turned away to begin barking orders into a radio, Elton again raised his hands high in the air and shouted, “Everyone! I need everyone’s attention right now! We all need to head over to Snow King Resort immediately! That’s without delay, now!”
“What’s going on?” someone demanded.
“There isn’t time to get into that; we need to get over there now. Once we do—once everyone’s indoors, accounted for, and safe—we’ll get you all up to speed.”
“Safe?! What the hell’s—”
The question was never completed. Danielle yanked her handgun out, pointed it high into the air due south, and fired off three rounds. She screamed, “MOVE, GOD DAMN YOU!” loud enough to make the report of the pistol sound embarrassed, and then fired off two more shots just for the hell of it.
It was enough to get a large cluster of people scurrying off toward Snow King Avenue like a school of spawning salmon. A few of the others, the harder ones who tended toward, the more “physical” professions, stood around to cast sullen looks in her direction, but then they broke off to follow the others as well. One of the older men cleared his throat as he passed by her and rumbled, “Mighty bad karma, shooting your piece off like that, lady…” in a threatening voice. Elton stiffened and made to go after the man, but Danielle stopped him with a hand to his chest.
“Let him threaten, as long as it gets his fucking ass moving,” she said.
Elton shook the anger from his hands, stooped, lifted Cuate up to ride on his hip, and began to follow the crowd, his free hand tightly wrapped in Danielle’s. As they walked, Cuate asked, “Is Pap okay?”
“Sure,” Elton nodded. “Pap’s fine; he’s gonna be back down real soon. Just wait and see.”
Something about the ease with which those words were uttered made Elton hate himself bitterly, seeing as how he was again making promises he had no way to keep. He wondered briefly if it hadn’t just been better to run off with Danielle as she’d suggested.
Too late, either way. They were in the goddamned jackpot now, and the only way out… was through.
44
ACHLUOPHOBIA
Clay was unsure what pulled him up out of sleep, but he was certain he didn’t come back to consciousness on his own. There was some unnamable difference between an awakening self-initiated and that which was brought on from an outside agent. It was a thing recalled as soon as the mind regained the ability to access memory, though the only memories available from the time before returning were the muddled hallucinations of a near-somnambulant, lesser version of self. Clay lay in the dark thinking about this; thinking about how this was a thing he could know in the absence of observed evidence, a feeling to which he could point like an itch on the back of his neck. He wondered what had brought him back. A noise outside? The cabin settling in the early morning? The strangeness, perhaps, of the cabin itself and the bed upon which he laid?
He pulled a deep breath through his nostrils, taking in the strange smells of the bedroom (master suite, he reminded himself), the place in which he’d first searched for Jake, finding not the least shred of his existence. He lay in a room once occupied by a ghost, maybe, for all of the presence he felt therein. It was like sprawling on a hotel bed, the only difference being he hadn’t troubled to yank the comforter to the floor on his first night for fear of the crusted overcome stains of travelers past.
He breathed in again and the room still smelled foreign.
The sensations of his body returned to him as he reposed in the darkness; the constriction of bluejeans around his groin, the suffocating press of boots squeezing against his feet. He lifted a hand and probed lightly along his chest, feeling shirt and vest, shoulder harness and pistol. He’d collapsed back onto the mattress without undressing, then; probably comatose before his head made the first bounce. He cast his concentration experimentally toward his midsection and was delighted to discover no presence of nausea. When he tensed the muscles of his neck, there was no evidence of ache or throb. He thought back to the last time he’d been awake and realized he hadn’t drunk himself to sleep; it had been pure exhaustion that sent him under.
Thank Christ for that, then. A morning without the shits was lately a small miracle.
Clay skinned his eyes to slits and detected a low, orange glow coming from the direction of the door. He’d forgotten the candle. Fucking stupidity on his part; it was an excellent way to burn down the whole goddamned cabin. That he was alive and cognizant of this fact told him only that it was not yet his time. Given how things had progressed over the last few days, par for the course would have been a slow and agonizing immolation. That such a thing had not come to pass hinted at the greater plans of the universe; either that he was being prepared for a run of good luck… or saved for one last invasive ass fucking.
“I guess I’ll need to find some lube in any case…” he muttered into the darkness. His voice cracked with phlegm as he spoke and he cleared his throat loudly.
He decided to get up and find some water, maybe have a bit of a piss. He opened his eyes a little further and looked toward the doorway, intending to use the low candlelight from the hall to orient himself within his surroundings. There in the opening, he saw the pitch black outline of a shoulder and arm, and above these, the sliver of a head peering around the jamb.
Clay shouted in horror and lurched for the nightstand, convulsing involuntarily under the chills that coursed along his spine like a corpse’s fingertips. He snatched for the flashlight, nearly knocked it from the table in his panic, and snarled loudly when he finally managed to loop a thumb and middle finger around its base as it threatened to skitter away into the darkness. He rolled back to the door, grunting and spitting as he pawed at his gun with a hand that functioned about as well as a flipper, before finally ripping it from the clamshell. He thrust it out at the door, seeing as he did that whoever it was out there hadn’t even troubled to move.
“Fuuucking twaat…!” he howled and thumbed on the flashlight.
Clay was stricken momentarily stupid when the light fell upon the door, and he saw only his jacket hanging from the top corner. The sleeve protruded stiffly from the edge, jutting out at an angle to occlude his view of the hallway beyond. He nearly laughed at the sight but held that laugh in; not at all interested to discover what sounds he might make in the current situation. He slid from the foot of the bed, stood, and crept to the door, straining his ears for any sounds beyond the room. The only noise he could detect was the slide of his boot soles over the rug.
He reached out the hand with the flashlight slowly, ever so slowly, toward the door and swung it further open so that his view to the hallway was unobstructed. Then he pressed the flashlight up against the side of his pistol and eased out onto the landing. He found it empty. There were pictures on the walls, and the candle cast their shadows above them toward the ceiling; they lengthened and contracted as it danced over the slowly melting wax in its dish. The little flame seemed to laugh as it capered.
The strangeness of the moment came rushing upon Clay like a hurricane; he felt his heart hammer in his chest—three irregular, jolting thuds against the sternum—and he collapsed onto the couch, panting heavily. A cold sweat stood out on his neck and forehead, and he wondered if he was having a heart attack or if this were some dilatory condition related to being frightened half to fucking death. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything like it; or if he’d ever experienced such a thing at all. He’d seen some of the others after a gunfight—Pap’s men or that turn-coating son of a whore O.B.—laugh after a close call, and sometimes they would shout crass jokes at each other in loud voices, almost as if they dared fate to take another swing.