“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Fred.”
“Why not?”
“The body is only a carrier. The nature of the beast is non-material. If you destroy its present body, you will provide the new one.”
“I think that’s superstition.”
“Believe me. That’s how it works.”
Reluctantly, I shoved the pistol back in the pack. I dropped to my stomach and wormed my way through the narrow tunnel, scraping my shoulders against the rock. I had the distinct impression that the rocks were swelling in around me like a gigantic esophagus. Clammy sweat greased my body. I snorted often, trying to blow the stink of death out of my nostrils, but it was lodged somewhere up behind my eyeballs.
From forty feet away I could see our rope trembling.
I started crawling, stumbling and falling up the slick wet rubble. I caught the rope and pulled, feeling a soft springy resistance. I shifted my grip and swung my weight from it. Resistance ceased, dropping me to the stones. I pulled on the rope, sick with fear that it might have been cut, but it held firm. I pulled myself up hand over hand, levered myself up through the hole, and called down to Ann.
“Hook the rope to your belt and I’ll pull you up.”
The constellations were spread out like diamonds when we walked out from under the trees. A breeze rustled the sedge-grass. Our shoulders touched, and it suddenly struck me how warm she was, how precious and fleeting was life, and how ridiculous the ponderous conventions of courtship. I slid my arm around her waist and we walked up the hill.
The hood of my car gaped open like the jaws of an alligator. A quick inspection showed me the clamps had been pulled off the distributor cap. The rotor was missing.
I shivered.
“This scares me, you know. Worse than those corpses.”
“Yes,” said Ann. “It seems to retain the memories of those it inhabits. Carla Frick would never have known enough to do this. Would Mr. George?”
“Yes. He was mechanically clever.”
“So the creature is getting his bearings here. Learning the way of this world. It’ll be more effective now. More efficient. I wish I knew what it wanted.”
“What do you think it wants?”
“There’s no way to tell. It would have an alien set of values and referents. It couldn’t have desires like you and I, because there can be no material rewards, no time-things on the astral plane of existence. It—”
Ann broke off suddenly and stared across the road. I held my breath as ten seconds went by. Then I heard the deep frantic barking of a dog, ending in a gurgling yelp which raised the hair on my scalp. A man yelled. Four rifle shots punched neat spiral holes in the silence.
IX
All this happened in less than thirty seconds, but Ann Valery was already across the road and climbing through the fence on the other side. Curse her impetuous soul. I ran after her, ripped my pants jumping the wire, and caught up with her at the edge of the woods.
There was no need to go further. A dead coon-hound lay with his lips peeled back in a snarl, its throat ripped open, blood matting his fur. About ten yards away, lying under a prickly scrub-oak, lay the body of a young girl.
“Carla Frick,” said Ann, matter-of-factly.
It seemed a reasonable as sumption, though the black swollen face revealed no clue to what the girl had looked like when she was alive. A frilly white party dress was twisted around her bloated midriff; her legs were only partly clothed in flesh. Four bullet holes punctured the front of her chest. I could have covered them all very easily with my outspread hand.
“Good shooting,” I murmured.
“So much the worse for whoever did it.”
“What? Oh, I see. You think that now the hunter...”
“Isn’t it reasonable? Picture the scene. Carla Frick, call it that for convenience, comes out of the hole. Exertion of the body burns fuel which must be replenished. Dead organs cannot digest food and manufacture blood, therefore the raw substance is needed. She scents the dog, attacks.
“The hunter watches in horror, seeing what looks like a young girl gnawing at the throat of his dog. He yells a warning. The girl walks toward him, he preceives that she is... something else. He shoots. The figure keeps coming. He empties the chamber and stands paralyzed by fear. I don’t know the details of the occupation, but I rather suspect that the hunter is now the creature we’re looking for.”
While Ann talked, I’d been playing the flashlight on the ground. I couldn’t find the rifle. That gave me an urge to get the hell out. A spook was bad enough, but a spook with a rifle was something else.
It must have been morbid fascination which drew me back to an inspection of the girl. The bloated face, the frozen snarl of lips that once drew sweetly on lollypops, would fuel my nightmares for years to come — but what caught my eye was a black object clenched in her fist. I reached down and pried the rotor cap out of her fingers. Part of her flesh came away with it. As I wiped the cap on the dead grass, Ann was saying:
“Now the creature knows. He has taken one more step. Always before he relied on those already dead. Now he has learned to create his own corpses.”
The dog wore a leather collar. I twisted it around and angled the light so I could read the stamping on the metal tag: BOB WESTLAKE RT 3 GUBBS KNOB. There was a phone number.
I straightened up and saw Ann walking off into the woods. I called her once, but she kept on with her eyes straight ahead. I ran after her and caught her arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
She turned and stared, not at me, but through me. Her eyes were glassy and unfocussed.
I wasted no time talking. I took her hand and led Ann back to the car. She stood without moving while I replaced the rotor and clamped on the distributor cap I opened the car door and lifted her into the seat. Her body felt light and waxy, without strength.
Not until I started the engine did she blink and look around. I pulled a half-pint of Early Times out of the glove compartment, uncapped it, and shoved in under her nose.
“Drink!”
“What—?” Ann stared at me, then seized the bottle and tipped it up. I heard three distinct glurks, then she lowered the bottle and gave a long, moist sigh.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to... I just happened to slip into its wave-length.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Moving fast, across country. It’s hungry. It seems to know where it’s going.”
“Which direction?”
“That way.” Her finger pointed to the glow of Gubb’s Knob.
I burned rubber backing out of the drive and heading north.
I passed a camper-truck parked at the entrance to a field. I hit the brakes and jumped out, leaving the engine running. The registration on the truck’s steering shaft showed that it belonged to Bob Westlake.
“Why didn’t it use Westlake’s truck?” I asked as I got back in the car.
“I told you, spirits don’t like electricity, not even the small amount generated by a car’s ignition system. It makes them nervous, upsets their perceptions.”
“Are you nervous?”
She put her hand over mine. It felt reassuringly warm. “I’m all right now. What are you going to do?”
“I know where Westlake lives. I’ll stop by his house and pick up his wife, then go on from there.”
Westlake was a junker. Behind his six-foot board fence stretched a five-acre sargasso of derelict autos, trucks, busses, vans, motorcycles, and boats. Usually the place was lit by a dusk-to-dawn light blazing atop a thirty-foot pole. Now only the rising half-moon glowed dully on thousands of domed roofs.