At first he noticed nothing unusual. But then he became aware of a strange smell — more of a stink, really: musky, rank.
This was followed by a noise unlike anything Sam had ever heard before: something between the menacing snarl of a feral wolf and the guttural, angry grunt of a bull moose. And it sounded close.
Sam Wiggins had lived in Pike Hollow his entire life. He’d grown up on stories of strange things in the deep woods like other children grew up on Mother Goose and Peter Rabbit. Over the years, he’d come to accept them as gospel — in some form or another — and taken steps to avoid them. And so he had managed never before to come face-to-face with the actual sound, or smell, of evil. There was a long moment when he stood, paralyzed with surprise and fear. He felt a warm gush as his bladder let go.
The stench grew stronger: fetid, sour, goatish. There was a crackling in the brush near the side of the road. And then he heard that sound again. It was husky and ravenous: ravenous for blood and the rending of flesh.
Suddenly, a hundred things seemed to happen at once. Sam abruptly found his feet again and dashed around the front of the car, literally diving inside as a loud crashing burst from the nearby bracken; at the last possible moment he reached back and pulled the door closed, punching the lock as he did so; his flashlight, falling to the floor of the passenger seat, rolled backward and he saw something outside the window that, temporarily, drove all rational thought from his mind. Neighing in terror and dismay, he cringed back, windmilling with his legs, while the thing outside beat on his car with unimaginable fury. And then the light seemed to grow in intensity; the roaring sound suddenly mingled with another; his car shook once again under the violent assault — and then Sam slumped over the center column of the Civic, fainting, as merciful oblivion overtook him.
25
It took Logan longer than expected to reach Pike Hollow. Unlike on his earlier sorties, this time there was some traffic on the road — a ramshackle old truck with wood-framed sides, apparently hauling a variety of mechanical trash — and it seemed incapable of going faster than thirty miles an hour. Logan was unable to pass on the dark, twisty roads. To his relief, it continued down the main highway at the junction with 3A, and — turning onto the secondary road — he was able to make up some time. Even so it was almost nine as he neared the hamlet.
But just as he approached the turnoff for Pike Hollow, he noticed — ahead, around the bend in the road — a riot of flashing red and blue lights. Curious, he continued past the turnoff and drove around a few curves in the road.
A remarkable sight confronted him. On the shoulder some two hundred yards ahead of the third bend were no less than three state police cars and two ambulances, all with their lights whipping frantically. Dark figures could be seen moving beyond the vehicles, and powerful torches flashed over the blackness of the forest wall.
Feeling a sudden, deep misgiving, Logan immediately pulled off the road and killed both his engine and headlights. He sat there for a moment, observing the scene. He could hear a fugue of muttered conversations, with one particularly strident, anguished voice erupting occasionally over the drone before relapsing into silence. As he watched, Logan saw the oversized form of Krenshaw lumber in front of one pair of headlights before disappearing into the darkness again.
Even from this distance, he felt a terrible foreboding wash over him. Nevertheless he eased his way out of the Jeep, closed the door, and began approaching — stealthily, keeping to the shoulder, staying out of sight of the troopers, especially Krenshaw. As he drew closer, he could see two additional vehicles. One was an official park ranger truck. It looked like Jessup’s. The driver’s door was open. Directly in front of it was a beat-up old foreign sedan. “Beat-up” was an understatement: even from his vantage point, Logan could see the car was a wreck: huge dents in the roof, hood, and side panels; star-shaped impact marks in the windshield. A man was sitting on the far side of the hood, clothes askew, slumped forward, surrounded by several state troopers with notebooks and recorders in hand.
The sense of foreboding grew stronger.
He was now close to the emergency vehicles, and he could see a knot of EMTs bending over what looked like a shredded jumble of clothing and raw meat. Another step forward — and suddenly, as an official moved out of a spotlight, the scene resolved itself with terrifying clarity. He saw the unmistakable ranger’s hat, some distance away, its usual olive green now dark and matted with gore. What had seemed like a disordered heap of bloody clothing was, in fact, a body — a body torn almost beyond resemblance to humanity. Logan made out a ranger’s shoulder patch among the shredded remains. And then — to his dismay and horror — he saw, at one end of the jumble, the head of his friend Randall Jessup. It was dreadfully lacerated and misshapen… but it was nevertheless unmistakable. The eyes were open, and in the scene-of-crime lights they seemed to be staring directly at him.
“Hey!” Logan was shocked out of his paralysis by a shout. He looked over to see Krenshaw, who had spotted him and was quickly coming over. “This is a crime scene,” he snapped. Despite an awful daze that threatened to overwhelm him, Logan could see that Krenshaw looked more than usually angry. More than that: the man seemed uncharacteristically anxious.
“Get back,” he said roughly as he stepped up to Logan, preparing to bodily push him away. But Logan just stood there, head now turned away from the grisly sight yet somehow unable to move.
He heard Krenshaw sigh, then mutter a curse. The trooper let his arms drop to his sides. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “It’s Jessup.”
“What happened?” Logan heard himself ask.
Krenshaw paused before replying. “All right. This one time, I’ll tell you what we know — because you were a friend of his, went to school together. Otherwise you’d get fuck-all from me. It seems he was heading east, to Pike Hollow. He stopped here when he saw an assault in progress on the occupant of that Civic.”
“What kind of an assault?” Logan asked woodenly.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. The victim isn’t being too helpful, as you can hear for yourself.” As if on cue, the man sitting on the edge of the hood began to gesticulate wildly, his hands waving about as if to ward off something terrible. He uttered a brief, shrieking scream.
Despite his grief, horror, and growing feeling of numbness, Logan forced himself to ask another question — knowing it would probably be his only chance to do so. “Saul Woden?”
“According to my men, the guy never left his house this evening. On the other hand, there was plenty of noise coming out of the Blakeney compound.”
“What kind of noise?”
“I don’t know. My first man here on the scene couldn’t describe it all that well. Strange shit. A howling, he said — but not like any howling he’d heard before. Crashing sounds.” Krenshaw, who himself had developed something of a thousand-yard stare, now drew himself up. “And now you’ll have to leave, Dr. Logan. Don’t force me to have you escorted from the scene.”
After a moment, Logan nodded. Krenshaw began to walk away. A trooper came up to him and Krenshaw immediately began demanding the badge number of the trooper who’d left his vehicle outside the Blakeney residence so he could go into Pike Hollow for a bite of dinner. Next, they began discussing whether there was a back entrance to the Blakeney compound and, if so, how they could access it. Just as he was turning away, Logan heard the man sitting on the hood of the Civic raise his voice again. Looking back, he saw that the man had risen to his feet and was being restrained by two state troopers. With fresh surprise, he recognized the man as Sam the barber, who had given him a haircut on his first visit to Pike Hollow.