The three elders arranged themselves against one wall, and Logan and Albright followed suit. The wall, he noticed, was not the rough wooden planks he had seen in the rest of the building, but covered in some kind of cotton batting, greasy and torn, stuffing protruding from a hundred tears.
Seated on the three-legged stool was a man about forty years old, tall and muscular. He was dressed in the same homespun as the others, the only difference being that, instead of wearing trousers and a work shirt, he was dressed in something more closely resembling the loose vestments of a monk. He had a rough beard, like the others, and his brown hair fell in uncombed knots and tangles to his shoulders. He glanced at the elders without interest as they took their places against the wall. When his eyes reached Albright, curiosity and recognition flared briefly across his face before fading again. Finally, he saw Logan: and fear abruptly flooded over his features.
“No!” he said, pointing at Logan. “Make him go!”
“He’s here to help, Zephraim,” Nahum said in the same soothing voice he’d used before.
“He’ll tell! He’ll be telling them others!”
“No, he won’t. You remember Harrison, here — you met him as a sprat. He’s done staked his word on this man. And that scientist fellow who came — he never told a living soul about you, now, did he? And that was, oh, eight, nine months back.”
Zephraim looked at Logan with what the enigmalogist sensed was a confused welter of emotions — suspicion, uncertainty, fear, maybe a faint stirring of hope. “How can he help?” he said finally in a despairing voice, turning away from them.
“Don’t know, exactly. Not sure he done, neither. But they want to watch your turning.”
“No!” Zephraim said, wheeling back again. “It’s not for others to see! I don’t—”
But the man stopped in mid-sentence and looked away. Logan saw he was suddenly staring at the boarded-up window. It was no longer afterglow that streamed through the cracks between the boards — now it was moonlight.
The three elders exchanged glances but said nothing more. The air in the room became strangely charged, as if with electricity. It seemed everyone there was waiting for something to happen.
Which, Logan realized, was precisely the case.
Zephraim remained motionless, staring at the boarded window, for perhaps fifteen minutes. During that time, the moonbeams grew a little stronger, gilding the rough edges of the wood with a pale, ethereal hue. Logan was reminded of the color he’d seen re-created in Feverbridge’s secret lab.
Now Zephraim abruptly stood up. He began to move restlessly around the little room: picking up the bowl of gruel, then replacing it; pacing while muttering under his breath. Then, one by one, he stopped at the five men lined up against the far wall, looking intently at them in turn. Lastly he came to Logan, stared hard into his eyes. Zephraim’s own eyes had turned red-rimmed, bloodshot. Almost unwillingly, Logan allowed his empathetic senses to reach out to the man. He still sensed suspicion and uncertainty. But the fear was now gone. And there was something else: while he sensed the strangeness, the unnaturalness, he’d felt the first time he stood outside the walled compound, he felt none of the terrible wrongness of the two murder sites he had witnessed.
Zephraim turned away and, pacing again, resumed his low muttering. It might have been a trick of the light, but the man’s skin seemed to take on a darker, rougher cast. “Close the door,” he said roughly.
Nobody moved.
“Close the door!” he almost barked.
After a moment, Esau moved toward the door. He did so with the reluctant but familiar motion of someone who had done this countless times before. When the door closed, shutting out the light from the landing, the room immediately grew dim. And yet not as dim as Logan might have expected: light from the second night of the full moon seeped strongly between the cracks of the boarded-up window.
And now a change came over Zephraim. Several hives, or weals, began breaking out over his skin — large, irregularly shaped, almost black with subcutaneous blood. A low rattle began to sound in his throat. He moved back and forth irregularly, once, twice, all the time shaking his head so that his hair flew like a dark corona around him. It must have been a trick of the light, but the man’s beard, the hair on his arms, seemed to grow thicker and more rough; the nails of his hands appeared to lengthen and spread. The three elders exchanged glances once more.
Zephraim growled. And then — with a single, animal-like bound — he leapt for the window.
“Zephraim!” cried Nahum. “No—!”
But it was too late: with several violent, powerful yanks, Zephraim pulled the wooden planks away from the window with a harsh splintering sound. The light of the full moon streamed in, unimpeded. And then, quite suddenly, Zephraim seemed to go mad: he began rushing back and forth, growling; running to the window and throwing his face outward, baying to the moonlight; then, turning away, he ran around the room, falling onto all fours before rising to his feet again, overturning the stool, picking up the clay jug of water and dashing it to the ground, where it broke in a million pieces.
Immediately, the elders turned and made for the door. With both hands, Nahum took Albright and Logan by their elbows and propelled them out onto the landing, where he turned back, closed the door, and padlocked it.
“What just happened?” Logan said, shocked by what he had just witnessed, unlike anything in his long experience.
“I warned you,” Nahum replied. “It’s the changing time. The moon-sickness — it’s strong in him.”
Beyond the door, the sound of crashing and baying continued unabated.
“How long will it last?” Albright asked.
“ ’Til moonfall.”
“And is he a danger to others until then?” Logan asked.
“No,” Nahum said. “Not to others.”
And — looking into the man’s eyes — Logan suddenly understood. The lock on the door, the unusual padding on the walls of the garret room: they were not there to protect others from Zephraim… but to protect him from himself.
32
The group made the long trip back down through the rambling house in silence. Gradually, the sounds from behind the locked door grew more remote. Exiting the building, the five returned to the fire pit and sat down once again. Here, Logan could once again hear, faintly, Zephraim’s growling and baying, through the boarded window that he had torn open.
The three elders looked at each other, then at Logan and Albright. They seemed both abashed and relieved — abashed at the display of such a strange and embarrassing phenomenon; relieved that the display was over.
“This ‘moon-sickness’ Zephraim suffers from,” Logan asked. “It runs in your family, doesn’t it?”
Nahum nodded. “From what my grandpappy told me, there’s always been one or two of the clan been touched, more or less. But none like Zephraim.”
So with Zephraim, the syndrome — or condition — has found full flower. Logan thought of what Fred the bartender had said of the Blakeneys: his reference to “tainted blood.” “What form does it usually take, then?”