Four miles shy of the spot on the highway where the police had found the wrecked car, Vic made a sharp left along a narrow country lane. It was a farmer’s road and it cut through several of the major farms on the east side of town before finally branching off into the State Forest. At that point the macadam faded into gravel and then to dirt. The truck took the changes in stride; it was well used to this route.
Three miles into the woods, the road petered out and died. Vic rolled the truck to a stop and got out. Even though there was no one around, he scanned the dense forest and listened for human sounds, heard none, and nodded. He walked over to a thick clump of brush that stood in a gnarled tangle beside the end of the road. Vic looked around again, then squatted, took hold of a length of knotted rope that was cleverly hidden by weeds, and pulled on it as he stood. He backed up and a whole section of the shrubbery shifted with him, opening outward like a door and swinging on a pair of sturdy hinges. It took a lot of effort for Vic to shift the barrier, and as it moved the deception became obvious. The shrubs were actually seated in a long, low, flat-bottomed trough that was carefully camouflaged; from the outside the facade was perfect, from the inside it was clearly a kind of door. Vic pulled it wide, then got back in the truck and moved it twenty feet down the pathway revealed by the open barrier; then he went back and painstakingly pulled the foliage back into place. Anyone passing by would be fooled unless they knew exactly where to look and knew what they were looking for. Vic made sure that the shrubs were always overgrown and healthy, and he had chosen evergreens for the job because he wanted the deception to remain constant year-round, as it had for many, many years.
Back in the truck he drove a serpentine route that seemed composed of nothing but hairpin turns. The lane was just barely big enough for the truck to pass, and Vic liked it that way. Any larger and it would be too visible from the main road.
He drove for several miles, singing country along with the radio. Eventually, the tortuous route became wider as the hidden road joined with an actual lane, though one that had been left to grow wild decades ago. Vic kept it just trimmed enough to allow a clear passage for the truck, but that was it. The lane led him deep into the forest, past huge old oaks and maples, and then fed into an area that was populated with much younger trees, most of them less than thirty years old. He threaded his way through these until the lane brought him out into a field beside a deserted stone farmhouse. Vic drove up and parked outside the house.
As he killed the engine he caught movement out of the corner of his eyes.
He tensed for a second and then in the next moment he was out of the truck, a Remington.30–30 held at port arms. He dashed along the front of the house, following the hint of movement he’d seen, and then rounded the corner, bringing the rifle up and looking along the barrel. The figure continued to move away from him but then it seemed to sense him and stopped, turning slowly toward him. Vic studied it, his green eyes narrowed.
He lowered the rifle and looked back at the front porch. There were two dark bundles on the top step. Vic nodded to himself, understanding, then glanced back at the figure.
The figure stood there at the edge of the forest wall, nearly invisible against the tall weeds. Vic knew what it was, though he had never actually seen one before, except in the strange and wild dreams that the Man sometimes sent him. He knew that the thing was alive, in a manner of speaking. A homunculus. It stood in man-shape, but that shape twisted and fought to change, bound into that man-pattern by a will, Vic knew, greater than the sum of its parts. The homunculus wore shabby old clothes, rough canvas gloves, castoff shoes. The clothes were splashed with long streaks and splotches of old, dried blood. Less than a day old, Vic reflected. On its shoulder squatted a huge carved pumpkin — a jack-o’-lantern with a wicked grin. Vic thought it was a nice touch, and he grinned in return. Through all of the openings in the face, Vic could feel himself being watched by a thousand coal-black eyes. The carved smile seemed to Vic to be a reflection not of the things of which it was made, but of the mind that directed all such things in this place. He felt as if he was seeing the Man’s real smile this time — not the weird imitation of it he’d seen on Mike’s battered face last night — but a real reflection of the Man and his power.
He really missed the Man, missed being with him, running with him the way he had done thirty years ago.
A sound rent the air, and both Vic and the creature turned toward it, knowing the sound. Vic frowned. Dogs. Probably police dogs.
“Shit,” he said aloud. Now he wouldn’t be able to head down to the swamp and commune with the Man. That really blew.
The barking was a good mile off, but it was coming closer, probably following the blood scent clinging to the creature’s clothes. “We can’t let them find a scrap of anything around this place.”
The homunculus stood there amid the corn for a moment longer as if considering. It nodded its monstrous head just once. Then, as if a switch had been thrown or a door slammed shut, the power of will that held it in its parody of human form was abruptly withdrawn. In an instant it no longer had the strength to maintain that shape, even if it had wanted to. In that instant the body collapsed into tens of thousands of smaller shapes that wrestled and fought and fluttered and scurried to be free of the suffocating press and the closeness of the other shapes. The huge and misshapen jack-o’-lantern it had worn for disguise when it had come for Boyd and had gone in answer to Karl Ruger’s dark prayers wobbled and toppled and fell to the ground, exploding on impact into fragments of orange pulp, just as the man-shape exploded into rat-shape and roach-shape and worm-shape and mouse-shape and weevil-shape and beetle-shape, and poured outward among the weeds and tangled undergrowth.
The dogs were getting closer. Vic quickly gathered up the empty suit of clothes, shaking them to dislodge the last few spiders and roaches, then carried the rags to his truck and tossed them carelessly into the bed of the pickup.
Then he went back to the porch and examined the two bundles. They were backpacks, both of them sprinkled with blood, but both of them packed to bursting with bags of white powder and bundle after bundle of bloodstained money. A fortune. Vic’s mouth went dry as he looked at it.
“Well, fuck me.” He hefted the backpacks; each was a considerable burden, and a great avaricious smile carved itself onto Vic’s face as he realized what this unexpected treasure trove was. He had heard the news stories all night. “Well, fuck me blind and move the furniture.”
He put the backpacks on the front seat, humming happily to himself. Finding that took the sting out of not being able to visit Dark Hollow. Maybe he’d swing back around later.
Vic lingered at the house just long enough to take a considering look at the forest, the stretch of denser brush that led off into the woods at the foot of Dark Hollow.
“I’ll put this to good use,” he said to the woods. “Trust me.”
Then he got in his truck and left. By the time the first of the bloodhounds reached the spot, there was nothing left to find but a fractured jack-o’-lantern that still wore part of its twisted grin.
Iron Mike Sweeney lay on his bed and stared at the water stains on the ceiling. There was one stain that looked like a TIE fighter from Star Wars. The standard fighter, not the bombers or Darth Vader’s personal ship. Mike looked at it and tried to think about that rather than the pain. Sometimes he succeeded. All morning he’d tried most of his old tricks for shoving back the hurt, to force the pain back into its dark little box, to shoo the shame out the window. He’d recited bits of movie dialogue, did the alphabet based on the first letters of the titles of science fiction novels, cast fantasy remakes of classic sci-fi flicks with his favorite current actors. Usually he could get lost in those games, but not today. Today none of it worked. The memory of last night was too fresh, too sharply painful in every way. And too strange.