DeWalt walked to the end of the room, using the wall to guide him to the stairs. His fingertips glided over the smooth surface of a mirror, then over the splintery, rough-cut window frame. The window had been boarded over, so the light of the moon didn't penetrate. He passed the window and bumped his head on an outcrop of wooden coat pegs.
Then his boot thumped into the hollow riser of the stairs. He'd never been up to the second floor. A piece of fabric hung in front of him and he brushed it aside like a cobweb. Running his hand along the wall, he found a light switch. He flipped it once, then again.
Nothing.
It was even darker in the narrow stairwell. He strained his eyes at the murk above him. Something shuffled in the shadows.
"Chester?" He wished he had brought a flashlight. He should have figured the power might be out when Chester’s phone call had gone dead. Chester had been nitching about all those falling trees and the crazy green glow, and that was plenty enough to get DeWalt out of his easy chair.
Some pioneer you are, Oh Lodge Brother.
I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman.
To what do you attribute your accelerated pulse and the faint quiver of your limbs?
The unknown.
Brother, all is unknown. Except for your overly familiar testicular organs.
Sir, I object. No need to get personal.
The first tenet of the Royal Order of the Bleeding Hearts charter is "Know thyself." Perhaps that scares you more than anything else.
Mr. Chairman, pardon me, but I've had enough of your Flower Power sloganeering and half-baked solipsism.
Brother, do I detect mutiny in the ranks?
Walk with me, Mr. Chairman. I dare you.
DeWalt headed up the stairs, staggering on the narrow runners, his arms pressing against the walls for balance. The air was cooler up here, and he felt a draft as he stepped into the room. A shard of light cut between the curtains like a silver sword blade. The room, apparently Chester's bedroom, took up the entire floor. The moon glinted off the green brass of a bed railing.
He moved to the bed, checking among the ragged quilts for Chester's parchment-covered bones. He uncovered nothing but the vinegary odor of stale sweat and piss dribbles. He was about to go downstairs when he heard a shuffling under the bed.
That wasn't a dust bunny, Oh Lodge Brother.
Shall we investigate, Mr. Chairman?
It's your mutiny.
DeWalt stooped, one of his knees popping. He put one hand on the metal bed frame, a stray mattress spring digging into the back of his wrist. He tilted his head so his eyes could collect enough light to see. He heard another shuffle and saw a thin dark rope quivering on the floor.
The rope moved toward him, and he saw the shadowy body attached to it. Boomer. Chester's droopy-eared best friend and resident methane factory. The dog turned to him, and DeWalt saw a moist glistening dot that must have been the dog's nose.
DeWalt wondered why the mangy beast hadn't barked upon his arrival. The dog knew his smell, and surely Boomer had heard the Pathfinder driving up. This was a hound dog, for Christ's sake.
Chester usually took Boomer everywhere he went. Even in the truck, Chester would be behind the wheel and Boomer riding gassy shotgun, the worn pads of his paws splayed on the dashboard. But Chester's truck was out in the yard, so Boomer's master wasn't out for a solo spin.
"Here, boy," said DeWalt in a soothing voice.
Boomer wiggled on his belly, working the joints of his legs. DeWalt could hear the bones knocking on the pine floor as the hound scooted toward him.
"That's a good Boomer," he said. He was about to reach out and stroke the dog when it lifted its heavy wrinkled head out of the shadows.
DeWalt jumped back as if electrified.
And he knew why the dog hadn’t barked.
The thing on the dog's shoulders couldn't rightly be called a head. It was more like an inverted boot, with a long, dry, leathery tongue dangling toward the dusty floor. An eye shone on each side of the face like a radioactive green pea. The moistness DeWalt had seen was a blowhole that gaped in the slope of the skullbone like a Venus’s-flytrap, opening and closing with a faint, marshy sigh.
The eyes lit up like twinkling Christmas lights, a limey neon decoration for a nightmare. Ears- no, cactus bulbs, DeWalt's horrified mind screamed-pinned themselves back as the head tilted toward him.
DeWalt processed all this insane information in a heartbeat, but it was a long heartbeat, because his aortic chamber had frozen in fear. When his lungs resumed hammering oxygen into his bloodstream, he backed toward the stairs.
The thing that had been Boomer crawled to the center of the room, its flytrap orifice gurgling. The creature had no fur, only bristles that flexed as the body stubbed toward DeWalt. Worst of all was the snakeroot of a tail thumping the floor, as if the mutated Boomer still wanted human affection.
DeWalt half fell, half ran down the stairs, hurtling forward with his arms crossed in front of him. He stumbled through the living room, imagining that the clutter around his ankles was creeping myrtle vines and the table edge at his knee was a birch branch. A dry crash filled the farmhouse as the highboy toppled, and then DeWalt was at the screen door, flailing through the mesh. He scooted into the Pathfinder and was turning the key when he saw a dark form coming around the barn.
The figure moved with a shambling gait, the way Chester did when the old fool was on a three-day drunk. DeWalt opened his door and got out, leaving the engine running.
"Chester, what in God's name happened to Boomer?" DeWalt said, surprised that his vocal cords found room to vibrate in his tight throat.
The figure shuffled closer, and DeWalt could smell him now. Chester had never been a chronic bather, but even he knew enough to at least stand in a rainstorm once in a while and let the worst odors wash away.
DeWalt was about to call out again when he saw the eyes. Neon eyes that he shouldn't have been able to see from twenty feet away. The figure lifted its arms. “ Shu-shaaa,” it said.
DeWalt spun, slipped in a pile of Boomer's excrement, then got up and dashed to his vehicle.
The Pathfinder cut twin dark curves in the grass as DeWalt sped away before the figure by the barn could shuffle out of the shadows and fully into the moonlight. DeWalt didn't want to see it. His imagination was painting mad enough nightmares without any more help from reality, and the Lodge Brothers in his head were, for the first time in years, speechless.
James Wallace shouldn't have had that third beer down at the Hayloft Tavern. In fact, he shouldn't have gone there at all. The blue jeans, cowboy hats, and flannel shirts should have tipped him off, plus the name of the place wasn't exactly a drawing card for the yuppie generation. And he could have taken a cue from the band that was playing at one end of the huge old barn. "Big Willie and the Half-Watts."
Yee-haw.
But driving by, he'd seen that big-screen TV through the window, and March Madness was in full swing. He liked to watch the tournament even if the teams playing were Fleaspeck Valley State and Bumfield Tech.
The people had been nice enough at first. The bartender had taken his money without drawing back his hand from the contact. Not a single overt response to James’s skin. Probably a few remarks slithered from the corner booths, but midway through the second beer, the edges of his awareness had tunneled considerably, and about the only white eye that bothered him was Dick Vitale's glass one.
Then the girl had talked to him. She was two stools away, but that was close enough to make James uncomfortable. He could almost hear the rustle of the nooses tightening behind him.
"You like basketball?" the redhead said, turning and smiling at him.
"Yeah. I'm a Georgetown fan. Got my degree there."
His tongue felt a little thick. Still, it was pleasant just to talk to someone. Aunt Mayzie was good company, but she sometimes got tired of having him around. Besides, this was different. A lot different.