He quickly got up and turned around and saw that he was alone. He had been so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t really noticed. The helicopter was still there, silent now, but everyone else had left for the Lodge. At that moment, somebody turned off the helipad’s lights and he was instantly plunged into near darkness. He felt uneasy, unnerved by it, although it was quite natural for the lights to go out when their use was no longer necessary.
There had been no sign of a tram going down to the village. He pressed the light stud on his watch and saw that it was long overdue. He’d been sitting there for close to an hour!
Slowly, his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, which was not total. The moon came out from behind the clouds, and up on the hill the lights of the Institute lit up the night sky. Even the road down was illuminated with small battery powered orange lanterns to guide night walkers and drivers.
A breeze rustled the tops of the trees nearby, and he was engulfed in the sounds of the night, the insects and other creatures of the dark. Far off he could even hear the distant pounding surf. Nothing was abnormal, nothing was out of the ordinary, except that the tram hadn’t come.
He debated going up to the Lodge, which was not very far although the climb was steep, but something prevented him from doing so. True, there were friends, even innocents, up there, but Reggie was there as well, and SAINT controlled everything from the lights to the air conditioning and saw and heard practically everything.
Better the village, where between a quarter and a half of the population was native or had been hired by Sir Robert directly and predated SAINT. The village itself was independent of the Institute in power and the like and its construction predated all of them.
Sir Robert, with far more light, had been trying to make the village, too. Well, the old boy had been lured to the meadow by something SAINT had printed out with his morning papers. There was no reason for Greg MacDonald not to stay on the road, and he’d walked it, day and night, hundreds of times.
He got up and started down the switchbacked road, walking at a moderate pace. He was scared and nervous, but he did not want to panic and do the job for them—if they intended to do a job at all. After all, he was as much a prisoner to SAINT and its crazy master as everyone else was.
The first switchback below the helipad took him out of sight of the Institute but within sight of the village that seemed so far away below. Then they both came into view again, and he stopped and stared, sensing a wrongness somehow and not being able to put his finger on it. Nerves? No, something else. It was quiet. Too quiet.
There were no insect sounds, no sound of breeze or surf. It was as if a cone of silence had descended upon him, out in the middle of nowhere, where it couldn’t possibly occur.
The moon ducked behind a cloud as he looked back at the Institute, and the hair on the back of his neck began to rise. He could clearly see the road leading all the way back up to the Lodge, outlined by the battery powered orange lanterns.
Now, one by one, those lanterns were going out.
And now there was a sound, in the distance but growing closer. It was a hollow sound that seemed to echo, the sound of some great feet coming down, marching in an unearthly cadence, as if hitting not the road but some great snare drum.
He began to walk faster. The pace behind him didn’t increase, but clearly it was progressing toward him quicker than he was moving, and he became painfully aware of just how many switchbacks there were in the road and just how close the turn up top was to the road turning back just beneath. What was the reach? Fifteen feet? Twenty feet? Could it survive jumping down between the switchbacks as it had so easily survived jumping from the cliffs to the beach, an even greater height?
Greg MacDonald started running.
He ran as fast and as hard as he could, but the thing kept coming on, coming faster although still at a deliberate pace. If it had any sense at all it would begin jumping to insure capture—or would it? Would it really care if it had to go into town or not to get him? He was running towards a harbor and town that was essentially a cul de sac. It had no need to hurry, for there was no place he could run.
He turned a corner and spotted not far below a lone man on horseback. For a moment he feared that they were coming at him to block him in, but then he realized that it was Red.
The chief constable stopped suddenly and his horse began to act up. He shook his head and tapped on his ear. as if wondering if he’d abruptly gone deaf. The horse grew more and more skittish, and he tried to calm and control the animal, and so he was still there when MacDonald rounded the switchback turn and practically ran into him.
“Red!” he shouted, breathing hard and feeling a little dizzy. “Red—get me down from here and fast! Whatever killed Sir Robert’s coming right down this road!”
Although the man was shouting, his voice was so muffled it was difficult to hear him, while the sudden sounds of the hollow footsteps of some great beast hit them both. The chief constable stared at him, then looked up at the Institute. Although the road lights seemed out up above and were progressively winking out below that as he watched, he could clearly see the Institute and something of the road in the moonlight. Clearly there was nothing there—nothing large, anyway.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?” he shouted at MacDonald.
“No time for explanations now! Let me get up on the horse with you and get us both back down. That thing’ll be here in another minute and a half!”
In the distance, through the eerie muffling of natural sound, the breathing of some great beast could be heard along with the footsteps. Red reached down and almost pulled the younger man up, then turned the horse and started back down as fast as he dared.
“But there’s nothing back there!” the old cop protested. “I can see there ain’t!”
“The damned thing’s invisible!” MacDonald told him. “That’s why it didn’t care about the beach in the daylight!”
Red didn’t much believe in invisible things, but he was too nervous to argue right now. “Where’ll we head? Surfs too rough to do us much good in the water, and I’ll let it get me before I’ll lure that fucker into town!”
MacDonald’s mind raced, trying to think. The decision had to be made in a matter of seconds. He peered forward and saw the steeple of the little chaple, removed from the town by about a hundred yards. Not much, but it was something.
“The church!” the younger man yelled. “It’s not much of a chance, but they’re devil worshippers, Red!”
They were there only a minute later, and both men jumped off as quickly as they could, then as Red pushed open the door to the church MacDonald looked back up the mountainside. Red was right—he saw exactly what he expected to see, except for the completely extinguished battery lights outlining the road. Still, he could hear the footsteps, very close now, and almost feel the hot breath on his face. He turned and followed Red into the church.
The lights didn’t work, but they managed to find a few things to pile up against the only door, including some of the back pews. The pews were all bolted to the floor but these had come loose years ago and nobody had ever gotten around to fixing them.
Red groped for MacDonald in the dark. “So now what do we do?”
“I wish I knew, Red. This may be it. You haven’t got a gun, have you?”
“ ’Course not. What the bloody good would it do against that anyway? Listen to it!”
It was clearly right outside now, and had stopped. They could hear its massive body rustle and the snort from its nostrils. They held their breaths and waited for what came next.