Hugh pushed his glasses up, poured himself another and offered it to Cameron. Cameron glowered. "You better have a good reason for all this spy stuff and bullshit, pal. You hear me, Ross? You better have a good reason for this."
Colin ignored him. "Matt, you and your mother stay here with Mr. Cameron. You find out some way to lock that front door, check the back, the kitchen windows, things like that. You musn't let anyone in here, you understand? No one but me or Doc or someone you're sure is… is all right."
Matt closed his eyes slowly, opened them again and attempted a smile. "Somebody who isn't dead, you mean." When Colin leaned back in surprise, the boy shrugged. "I wasn't always sleeping." Colin wanted to hug him, swallowed and did. The wind vanished for that moment, until he released the boy and stood again.
A jerk of his thumb over his shoulder toward Cameron. "Tell him, Peg," he said. "And for his sake, he'd better believe you by the time we get back."
He and Montgomery started for the door. With the knob in his hand he looked at Cameron, whose bewilderment had him gaping like a fish. "You have a gun, Bob?"
"A what?"
"Gun, stupid," Montgomery said. "The man asked if you have a gun."
"I…just a little…" He reached into his desk and pulled out a revolver. Montgomery considered, then tossed him the rifle. Cameron grabbed it and clutched it against his chest, staring at the barrel reaching up past his cheek. When Colin questioned him with a look, he said, "A bullet hole obviously doesn't do it, Col. That shotgun, though, might knock someone off his feet."
Colin nodded and led the way into the dining room. He stopped and poked his head back into the office long enough to tell Cameron to turn on all the lights; he didn't have to say it was to kill all the shadows.
Then Montgomery took Colin's arm and pushed him to the door. With his hand on the pushbar, Hugh blew a sigh and said, "I'm sorry."
"For what? For not believing the dead can walk? If you're sorry for that, you're as crazy as I am."
Montgomery's short laugh was more a forced wheezing; he ushered Colin through the door, followed and slammed it shut behind them.
The wind pummeled them sideways as they made their way to the sidewalk, slanted left and headed for the library. Colin was unnerved again by the emptiness of the town, the houses that should have at least had their porch lights on in this odd-colored dusk. At the end of the street the school reflected little but the winking on of the streetlights, and the flag on the pole was already shredding at the tip as it pointed the wind toward the bay and the mainland.
Hugh had hold of Colin's elbow as they turned into the library's walk. "I just want you to know I'm keeping an open mind," the doctor shouted.
"Good for you," Colin shouted back, and grinned as they ran up the wooden steps and paused on the porch, away from the main thrust of the storm. He shifted the shotgun from right hand to left and pushed through the glass double doors.
A single lamp was lighted on the rectangular checkout desk in the center of a foyer as wide as Colin's living room. A large room to their left, a larger one to their right, cluttered once with furniture and family, cluttered now with dark-metal shelves that measured the extent of the ten-foot ceilings. The aisles between were barely lighted by green-shaded bulbs hanging from the plaster on double-braided chains. Reading posters were neatly taped to the floral wallpaper, a straight chair and two benches along the entrance walls were piled with books and magazines. A stack of record albums lay on the carpeted floor beneath one of the benches.
"Hattie!" Colin yelled, peering past the desk to the staircase directly behind.
"Knew the guy who used to live here," Hugh said quietly as they moved deeper into the building. "Dumb bastard thought he'd get a leg or two up on heaven if he gave the town a library. He wouldn't spring for the money while he was alive so he willed this white elephant to the island, then hung around until he was at least ninety. Son of a bitch made napalm or something."
"Hattie!"
There was no echo, no resonance; the name struck a wall and died as if absorbed. The panes in the windows rattled like crystal.
"Place used to flood out every winter. That's why the biggest rooms are on the second floor. The guy didn't give a shit about what he kept down here. Had the gout, would you believe. The goddamned gout."
Colin wanted to tell him he wasn't interested right now in the library's history, but he needed the sound of the man's voice as he peered into the front rooms, squinting as though that would enable his vision to peel away the shadows that clung to the aisles and hid the titles of the books. Hattie wasn't answering, and if she already knew what was happening, he didn't blame her. What bothered him was the absence of the Doberman; that bloated guard dog should have been at their throats five minutes ago.
Montgomery pointed toward the stairs, then made a circling motion with his hand-Colin was to go up, he would finish looking around the first floor.
Colin nodded and brushed around the desk, stepped over a file folder lying open on the carpet, and took the stairs two at a time. The landing above was dark, the turn made slowly as he stared through the ornate balustrade at the huge single room that had been made of the upper floor.
Stacks, aisles, bookcarts, a door to his left of the landing that was Hattie's office, seldom used.
He kept the shotgun aimed straight ahead.
The wind screamed outside, living up to its name.
"Hattie, it's Colin Ross."
He heard Hugh downstairs, calling her name as well.
Shit, he thought, she can't be dead, for God's sake-and caught himself with a sour, mocking grin, wondering why it was that old ladies and children were automatically supposed to be exempt from the plagues of nightmares and the horrors of the real world. He stopped and warned himself sharply there was no difference in this case: The nightmare had taken strength from a madman who had his own rules, and it had supplanted the real. It had become the real. The dead were walking on Haven's End, and the only thing he could do was find a way to destroy them. Thinking he was still dreaming was going to get him killed.
He tried Hattie's name once more and reached behind him to tug at the office door. It was locked, and a rap of his knuckles produced no response.
A muffled clattering from the ceiling made him swing the weapon up, listening until he was satisfied it was only a family of squirrels hiding from the storm.
Another tug at the office door before he crooked the shotgun in his arm and began checking the meticulously handlettered file cards taped to the end of each stack, looking for the area where he'd find the information he needed. When he failed to locate a mythology section-silently condemning Hattie for the perversity of her own system-he checked for the Caribbean. He found half a dozen books on Cuba, Haiti, the Lesser Antilles, and the rest, but nothing specific to what he needed; they were little more than tourist books.
Neither was there anything under voodoo or satanism; under religion only the vaguest, superficial references to the pantheon brought over from Africa, embellished and altered and intensified to suit the needs of the slaves who had little else for comfort. There were no volumes at all on the occult, and he was surprised; with Hattie's famed interest in the other world, this was a singular and puzzling lack.
He wandered up and down the aisles, squinting at titles, feeling time press in on him. His breathing was shallow, his patience on short tether, and twice he raised a helpless fist against the unfairness of it all.
Then, more by accident than design, he discovered a small section on magic. It was on a bottom shelf in the far corner, tucked under a curtainless window. He glanced out as he knelt, and saw the trees rippling away from the storm, saw telephone wires quivering, and grabbed the dusty sill when he spotted lights in a house two blocks away. Atlantic Terrace, Peg's street. A cloud of mist obscured his vision for a moment, and he swiped at the pane impatiently until it passed. A moment later he was positive the lights were coming from the Adamses'.