The girl had stopped making those noises because her throat and windpipe had been cut through, and now came only the terrible scraping sound.
“This we offer in humility and fear,” Sitterson intoned, “for the blessed peace of your eternal slumber. As it ever was.”
“As it ever was,” Hadley echoed softly.
Sitterson pulled at the thin leather thong around his neck, lifting the pendant from beneath his shirt. It was made from white gold, cast into the shape of a five-pointed symbol. Not a pentagram, but something more arcane, something older. He glanced at it briefly, concentrating on one small arm of the deformed star, and then kissed it before dropping it against his chest once more.
From the corner of his eye he could see Truman watching, but he did not turn to face the young man. Why should he? There was nothing on offer there.
Behind him, Hadley had crossed to the mahogany panels at the far end of the room, built into the plain concrete wall and the ancient rock of the ground behind them. Sitterson turned slightly and watched his friend open the first panel, sliding it back on smooth runners, to expose the ornate brass apparatus. Without hesitation Hadley grasped the lever and eased it downward, pushing against pressure, and kept his hand on it until it clicked into place against the lower pin.
And deeper down in a place that could never be seen Sitterson knew what was happening: in the mechanism older than Man, a small metal hammer struck a glass vial, cracking it from top to bottom and releasing the blood retained inside. The blood ran into a brass funnel that extended into a long, long pipe, running even deeper through rock and dark spaces, emerging eventually into a place deeper still.
Here, the blood poured onto a slab of marble leaning against the wall, and in the total blackness it began to fill the intricate image carved onto the marble slab’s surface.
Sitterson opened his eyes, not aware that he’d been daydreaming. His heart was thumping.
I mustn’t go down there, he thought, not even in my dreams!
“The boy,” Hadley said, and Sitterson nodded, sniffed, wiped his hands across his face. He had to get himself together. This had only just begun.
Calm, Curt thought, looking down at the blood-spattered leaves at his feet, and realizing with detached shock that his dick was still hanging out of his trousers. That seemed somehow sad. Stay calm, stay still, let them think I’ve given in, that’s my only chance…
The kid-zombie and mother-zombie were ambling toward him, kid holding the rusty blade, mother holding the saw that glimmered with Jules’s blood. Beyond them he could see her body, the ruin of her head and throat hidden by the big zombie. He was moving strangely, but Curt couldn’t see what he was doing. He was glad. But not seeing didn’t mean that he could not imagine, and every zombie movie he’d ever seen gave him hints.
The small zombie and the woman zombie hissed as they drew closer, giving their faces inhuman expressions for the very first time, and then they raised their blades.
Curt—the sportsman, the football star, the fit guy who all the girls loved to love—grabbed the father-zombie’s arms and heaved himself up, planting a foot on each of the approaching monsters’ chests and kicking hard. They sprawled to the ground, and Curt fell back onto the zombie holding the scythe at his throat. He used the momentum to roll backward, head slipping out from beneath the blade and his feet landing on the ground just past the zombie’s head. Jumping upright, amazed at his own escape, he stared at Jules for a couple of seconds, aware that big-zombie was turning to look at the commotion. On his face, blood.
Curt turned and ran. And just as he thought his legs had helped him escape and that he might actually make it—back to the cabin, back to friends, where they could pull together and defend themselves against these bastard things—the scythe sliced into the leg of his jeans, opened the skin across his ankle and tripped him.
Curt cried out as he hit the harsh, spiky ground. He wondered what saw teeth would feel like when it was tugged murderously across his throat.
Little Nemo in Slumberland was hardly the height of literary endeavor, but Marty liked the little dude. There was lots about Marty that the others didn’t understand, and lots they probably couldn’t, even if they bothered putting their minds to it. But he was a guy who, with the aid of mind-enhancing drugs, understood himself completely. And there weren’t may people who could say that.
Like Curt, for example, with his close-cropped hair and square jaw, defined muscles and eyes that said, Love me, please. Or Jules, sweet Jules with her pert little titties, ever-changing hair and an awareness of herself that stretched only so far as others saw her. Friends, but distant from him.
Dana, maybe. Dana had come closer than anyone, their friendship a complex thing but one which he relished, and treasured.
“Nemo, man,” he said, “you gotta wake up. Your shit is topsy-turvy.” He sighed and dropped the book to his chest. “Ah, I feel ya, Neems. Gotta ride that bed.” He stretched, and through the roaring of blood in his ears as he yawned—
“I’m gonna go for a walk.”
The voice wasn’t his.
Marty sat up, eyes wide. He looked around his room. Bed, chair, cupboard, weird picture on the wall, that was it.
“Okay, I swear to fucking God somebody is talking.” He ran his hands over his eyes, weary. Yawned again. Just that, he thought. Just me yawning.
But there’d been that time earlier, when the others were arguing and he thought he’d heard a whisper on the air…
“Or I’m pretty sure someone is… ah…” Marty shook his head.
“I’m gonna go for a walk.”
Marty stood and looked around the room, arms waving about his head as if to flick away an annoying fly.
“Enough! What are you saying? What do you want? You think I’m a puppet, gonna do a puppet dance— fuck all y’all! I’m the boss of my brain, so give it up!” He waited for something else, but there were no more voices, no presence in his room. He snorted. “I’m gonna go for a walk.”
He slammed his door behind him and stalked along the corridor. The large room beyond was subtly lit with candles and the newly-stocked fire, and for a second Marty stood at the end of the hallway and watched Holden and Dana. They were kissing, and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen, soft and passionate. It didn’t seem to fit their surroundings.
There’s something old and hard here, Marty thought.
“I don’t wanna…” Dana muttered. “I mean I’ve never… I don’t mean never, but not on the first…” “Hey,” Holden said, “nothing you don’t want.” He leaned in to kiss again and Marty had to turn away, walking across the room and heading for the outside door. To his left the hatch into the basement remained firmly closed, but he couldn’t help thinking that something had come out of there with them.
To his right, the lovers on the sofa glanced up at him with coy surprise.
“He’s got a husband bulge,” Marty said, frowning, not quite sure where that had come from. Jealous much, dude? Then he pulled open the door and stepped outside, gasping momentarily as he met the cool air. The door closed behind him and the cabin’s interior was instantly far away, a memory of someone else walking across that room and saying that strange thing. Who the fuck calls a boner a husband bulge? he thought, and though the memory of where he’d heard that phrase was fresh, he did his best to avoid it.