A fighting chance. Maybe. If she managed to keep them all alive.
“Dweeb,” she heard his sister mutter under her breath. Emily sniffed back a tear and replaced it with a smile. The moment was about as emotionally poignant as she had ever experienced. Leave it to the kid to go and ruin it.
The moment gone, Emily concentrated on maneuvering the group along the path she’d walked earlier in the day.
With the dying sun now lost behind the far horizon, a three-quarter moon had peeked through a break in the clouds, saturating the forest in a dim silver light. At the duck pond, a white mist wafted off the water, coating the ground in an eerie fog that almost came up to Ben’s knees. The kid was fascinated by the shroud of water vapor as he moved his free hand through it.
“Pretty,” he whispered.
More like spooky, Emily thought. But then, at his age did he have any idea of just how much trouble they were all in? Of course not. Emily sensed Rhiannon step closer to her. The girl looked nervous. Good. She should be, and an extra pair of nervous eyes to add to her own and Thor’s could only be a good thing.
The ducks were nowhere to be seen. Probably huddled together deep in the reeds, if they had any sense. Even Thor was more subdued, pacing alongside Rhiannon’s right side, panting gently.
The path leading up to the Jefferson place was a lot easier to negotiate thanks to the moonlight lighting the way. As the house came into view, Emily felt her pulse begin thrumming in her wrists. What if Simon wasn’t there? Worse, what if something had found him before she did?
As they topped the steps, Emily saw Simon’s car parked off to the left of the house, just beyond the corner of the garage. So he had made it this far, at least.
A shape materialized just beyond the car, and Emily let out a sigh of relief as Simon stepped out of the shadows and onto the gravel path.
He was alive.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Emily’s feeling of relief disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.
There was something wrong with Simon. The way he stood, his hands draped at his sides, his eyes wide open, staring directly at them, his mouth a thin slit, the way his chest barely seemed to move. It looked like Simon, but it just didn’t feel like Simon. His energy just felt unnatural.
She felt Ben start to move from her side toward his father. Heard his ecstatic cry of “Daddy” as he took a step closer.
“Stop!” Emily yelled, her voice like a crack of thunder in the stillness of the virgin night, her hand automatically reaching out and grabbing the little boy’s shoulder, slowing him before he could get out of her reach. “Stop,” she said again, more gently this time, as she swung the boy around and dropped down to face him. “That’s not your daddy, Ben. That’s…someone else.”
“No!” he yelled at Emily while at the same time tearing loose of her grip. He turned and sped across the grass toward Simon, his little legs eating up the ground at a frighteningly rapid pace. The spell that had grasped Emily so firmly broke; she was back in reality watching as the boy raced across the fifty or so feet separating them from Simon.
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, casting a quick glance over her shoulder. Rhiannon must have sensed something was not right with the scene because she seemed glued to the spot of grass she was standing on, a look of horror and confusion painted across her pale face.
“Stay here,” she ordered the girl. Then Emily was off, chasing after the kid, her feet sliding on the damp grass, searching for traction.
Simon did not move to intercept them; he stood as still as the trees behind him, his face expressionless and his hands resting flat against his thighs, like a soldier at attention.
There was maybe twenty feet left between the kid and his father when a blur of motion exploded past Emily on her right and made like a missile directly for the running boy. It caught up with him in a second, skidding to a stop between the child and Simon, blocking the kid’s path. Ben collided with the flank of Thor, bounced off him, and flew three feet backward through the air, a surprised “Oomph!” whistling from his throat as he landed on his butt on the grass.
“Bad For! Bad doggy!” the little boy cried, his voice a high-pitched wail as he struggled to get to his feet. Thor was back at the kid’s side in a second, dancing around the child and keeping him from standing.
It was all the time Emily needed to scramble after the boy and close the final gap separating her and Ben. She grabbed the spluttering kid with one arm under both of his shoulders, scooping Ben up in one fluid movement, even as he struggled and kicked against her, pulling him tight to her side.
Despite his son’s obvious distress, Simon did not move to help him.
“Daddy!” Ben cried, both hands reaching out to Simon. “Iwannnnntmyyydaddddddy.”
Perhaps the sound of his son’s voice struck a chord deep within Simon’s mind or perhaps it was simply coincidence, but as Ben’s sorrowful howl faded into the dark, Simon took a single jerking, almost robotic, step toward them.
“Oh, shit!” The first step was followed by another hesitant, wobbling step toward Emily and the boy.
Thor was back at her feet now, his attention focused on the boy under Emily’s arm, until he caught sight of Simon’s tottering steps in their direction. Snarling, the malamute turned and faced the advancing man.
“No!” Emily yelled. “Come here, Thor. Back up.” The dog threw a look at Emily, then back at Simon, who had moved another step closer. For a second, Emily thought Thor was going to disobey her and attack, but an instant later he was at her side.
She began to back away from Simon, unwilling to turn her back on him for a second. Ben cried his father’s name, both hands reaching out toward the shuffling figure.
Simon’s face remained expressionless, seemingly unmoved by his son’s dilemma, but with each step he took his head swayed slightly—first right, then to the left, as though the muscles in his neck were unable to hold the weight of his head. If it hadn’t been for the almost ramrod-straight posture of the rest of his body, she might think he was drunk.
With each faltering step forward Simon took, Emily managed two backward. If she didn’t have Ben tucked under her arm, she would have simply turned and run for her life, but she had to think about Ben and Rhiannon. She had no idea what was wrong with their father, but there was no way she was going to let him get close to either of them until she figured it out. She didn’t want to hurt him, but if he had suffered some kind of breakdown or the red dust had managed to affect him in some way, then she was going to have—
Simon teetered out of the long shadows of the trees and into a bright pool of moonlight.
He was fully illuminated now, and Emily could see there was something very wrong with him.
Slick black tendrils, each edged with small wicked-looking barbs, glistened in the light of the moon. Emily could see two of them jutting out from either side of Simon’s spine just above his shoulder blades. They arced up above his head and back into the shadows, as though they sprouted from the very darkness itself. A third snakelike tentacle spiraled from the darkness and attached to the back of Simon’s head, terminating at the point where Simon’s spine met his skull. An instant before Simon took each step, Emily could see the barbed tubes pulse as though they were moving liquid under pressure from whatever was hidden in the darkness to Simon. Or maybe they were issuing instruction, she thought, as the tentacles throbbed again and Simon took another faltering step, as if on the command of some strange puppet master.