At first, each time he saw one of them he brought his boat to a stop, staring back at the child, challenging it.
But each time the child — never blinking — moved toward him, and Judd’s nerve broke. Gunning his engine, he steered into one of the narrow channels, heedless of where he was going, determined only to get away from those dead, hypnotic eyes.
At last, though, he came to his cabin, and the fear began to ebb out of him as he hurried toward the safety of his home. But as he drew closer, he felt the children’s presence yet again, felt their cold eyes reaching out to him, felt his skin crawling with their unseen gaze.
Then the howling began, the eerie baying that shattered what was left of his courage. The sound seemed to come from everywhere, and now, as his eyes searched the darkness, he could see them once more.
Everywhere he turned, the wailing furies stood.
He froze, watching the children, his eyes darting from one of them to another, panic growing inside him like a wild beast, gnawing at him, sapping his strength.
Then, coming toward him out of the darkness, he recognized Jonas Cox. The boy’s face seemed to hang in front of Judd, staring at him, looming just beyond his reach.
But Jonas’s eyes had changed. Their empty gaze had taken on a glowing fury, and they bored into him, accusing him, condemning him.
Judd tried to look away, but it made no difference where he turned; Jonas seemed to be everywhere, surrounding him.
Finally Judd closed his eyes, determined to face the vision no more, but Jonas’s image stayed with him.
And then, as Judd’s skin crawled with an icy chill of terror, Jonas reached out to him, touching him.
Judd tried to shrink away from the boy’s touch, but Jonas’s fingers somehow reached inside him, penetrating him, twisting and turning within him, as if searching for something.
And finally, in the center of his chest, he felt a burst of blinding pain, a pain that shot outward, paralyzing him, then twisting his muscles into knots that threatened to snap every bone in his body.
A moment later he felt the rest of the children falling upon him, tearing at him, and his mind began to close down so that all he was aware of was the pain, an agony that crept into every cell of his body.
He felt as if he were being tortured with millions of tiny needles, each of them twisting within him, jabbing at him, destroying him.
He could feel his body beginning to decay as his cells began to die.
An image of Carl Anderson came into his mind — his chest torn open, a vulture perched upon his skull as it plucked his eyes from their sockets.
As he felt the same thing happening to himself, as he understood with a terrible clarity the reason for his death, the last of his will to resist crumbled within him.
The six children led by Jonas Cox pulled Judd Duval’s body from his boat and began tearing it to pieces, dropping fragments of it into the water, to be devoured by the gathering alligators and crocodiles. Their cries of rage began to die away as they tore their souls from Judd Duval’s dying corpse, and as tears began to fill their eyes, they backed away, numbed by what they had done.
And yet, for the first time in their lives, they felt whole.
• • •
On the island where Clarey Lambert waited, six more candles blinked out, and six more of the dolls began to weep.…
31
Warren Phillips had been working steadily, reducing the last of the fluid he’d extracted from the thymus glands of the four children in the nursery into the life-giving element that would keep his body alive and vital.
With the three small vials he was now placing into his medical bag, he would be safe for several weeks, weeks he would use to find a place to continue his work, a place where he was unknown.
Yes, the future was bright, for everywhere in the world he would find people willing to pay anything for the magic he had discovered in newborn children.
And there were places, he knew, where babies were cheap, where children were born every day who could be bought for a few dollars.
A few dollars, without questions of the purchaser or his motives.
Next time he wouldn’t bother to keep the children alive.
Next time he would simply milk them for a year or two and then destroy them. That, at least, was something he’d learned here in Villejeune. If he left them alive, they had to be dealt with.
But after tonight, after he was gone, it would no longer be his problem to deal with.
Dispassionately, he thought about those children, wondered what might happen to them when he was gone and they no longer had the Dark Man as a center for their empty lives.
He suspected their minds might begin to shatter, as Kelly Anderson’s had only a month ago. And if they did — He froze as a feral howl of rage echoed through the subterranean chambers carved out of the limestone beneath his house.
As a second howl rose, he hurried from the laboratory, to the foot of the stairs leading upward.
There, Lavinia Carter, her face ashen and her body trembling with fear, gazed upward. Phillips shoved her out of the way. “The children in the nursery,” he snapped. “Get rid of them!” Without waiting to see if his order would be obeyed, Phillips mounted the stairs, pausing in the dimly lit entry hall. Outside, the night was filled with what sounded like the howling of wolves. Phillips knew it was not.
It was the children.
The children who belonged to him.
Black fury rose within him. He controlled them; he commanded them!
Consumed with rage, Warren Phillips threw open the front door of his house.
The scene before him made his blood run cold.
The children stood in a semicircle, their hands intertwined, their empty eyes fixed on him.
In the center of the semicircle, alone, stood Michael Sheffield.
His son.
The deathly howling of the children slowly died away as they saw the Dark Man standing before them.
But tonight he wore no mask, and they saw him clearly.
They began to move, edging forward, the fear he had always seen in their faces suddenly gone, replaced with something else.
Hunger.
Hunger, and hatred.
The semicircle spread outward, leaving him with no retreat but the house itself. But when Phillips glanced over his shoulder, he saw more of the silently menacing children, crowded into the foyer of his house, cutting him off from any possible escape. They moved forward, forcing him out into the darkness of the night, then joined hands with the others. The Circle was complete.
In its center, frozen with terror, stood Warren Phillips.
The Dark Man.
Michael Sheffield moved toward Phillips, pausing in front of him.
The eyes of the father and the son met.
“We want only what is ours,” Michael said quietly.
As an all-consuming fear filled Warren Phillips, Michael Sheffield drew a knife from his belt.
He raised it high, its polished blade glinting brightly in the moonlight.
Then, just as the knife began to descend toward the Dark Man’s throat, Michael stopped.
The knife hovered a few inches from the Dark Man’s neck.
“Do it,” Phillips said, the words rasping in his throat as his numbed mind slowly realized why Michael had stopped.
The fear — the all-consuming fear that had seized him only a few minutes ago — had drained his body of the hormones that had kept him alive so long.
Already he could feel the creeping aches in his joints, the congestion in his lungs.
As he realized what was happening to him, the fear rose up in him again, speeding his metabolism, accelerating the decay that was raging through his body.
He was dying from within, and he knew how painful it would be, for he had long ago determined that the last of the artificially supported organs to fail would be the heart, and the lungs.