And part of me still wants to believe that. The alternative turns everything I thought I understood about the world I live in upside down.
He felt feverish and a little sick to his stomach. How could a normal man in the twenty-first century accept a shape-shifting monster? If you believed in Holly Gibney’s outsider, her El Cuco, then everything was on the table. No end to the universe.
“He’s not arrogant anymore,” Holly said quietly. “He’s used to staying in one place for months after he kills and while he makes his change. He only moves on when that change is complete, or nearly complete. That’s what I believe, based on what I’ve read and what I learned in Ohio. But his usual pattern has been disrupted. He had to run from Flint City once that boy discovered he’d been staying in that barn. He knew the police would come. So he came down here early, to be near Claude Bolton, and he found a perfect home.”
“The Marysville Hole,” Alec said.
Holly nodded. “But he doesn’t know we know. That’s our advantage. Claude knows his uncle and cousins are buried there, yes. What Claude doesn’t know is how the outsider hibernates in or near places of the dead, preferably those associated with the bloodline of the person he’s changing into or out of. I’m sure it works that way. It must.”
Because you want it to, Ralph thought. Yet he couldn’t find any holes in her logic. If, that was, you accepted the basic postulate of a supernatural being that had to follow certain rules, possibly out of tradition, possibly out of some unknown imperative none of them would ever be able to understand.
“Can we be sure Lovie won’t tell him?” Alec asked.
“I think so,” Ralph said. “She’ll keep quiet for his own good.”
Howie took one of the flashlights and shone it at the rattling air conditioner, this time picking up a litter of spectrally glowing fingerprints. He snapped it off and said, “What if he has a helper? Tell me that. Count Dracula had that guy Renfield. Dr. Frankenstein had a hunchback guy, Igor—”
Holly said, “That’s a popular misconception. In the original Frankenstein movie, the doctor’s assistant was actually named Fritz, played by Dwight Frye. Later, Bela Lugosi—”
“I stand corrected,” Howie said, “but the question remains: What if our outsider has an accomplice? Somebody with orders to keep tabs on us? Doesn’t that make sense? Even if the outsider doesn’t know we found out about the Marysville Hole, he knows we’re too close for comfort.”
“I see your point, Howie,” Alec said, “but serials are usually loners, and the ones who stay free the longest are drifters. There are exceptions, but I don’t think our guy is one of them. He hopped down to Flint City from Dayton. If you backtrailed him from Ohio, you might find murdered children in Tampa, Florida, or Portland, Maine. There’s an African proverb: he travels fastest who travels alone. And practically speaking, who could he hire for a job like that?”
“A nut,” Howie said.
“Okay,” Ralph said, “but from where? Did he just stop by Nuts R Us and pick one up?”
“Fine,” Howie said. “He’s on his own, just cowering in the Marysville Hole and waiting for us to come and get him. Drag him into the sun or put a stake in his heart or both.”
“In Stoker’s novel,” Holly said, “they cut off Dracula’s head when they caught him, and stuffed his mouth full of garlic.”
Howie tossed the flashlight on the bed and threw up his hands. “Also fine. We’ll stop by Shopwell and buy some garlic. Also a meat cleaver, since we neglected to buy a hacksaw while we were in Home Depot.”
Ralph said, “I think a bullet in the head should do the trick nicely.”
They considered this in silence for a moment, and then Howie said he was going to bed. “But before I do, I’d like to know what the plan is for tomorrow.”
Ralph waited for Holly to enlighten Howie on this point, but she looked at Ralph, instead. He was startled and moved by the hollows under her eyes and the lines that had appeared at the corners of her mouth. Ralph himself was tired, he supposed they all were, but Holly Gibney was exhausted, at this point running on nothing but nerves. And given her tightly wrapped persona, he guessed that for her that would be like running on thorns. Or broken glass.
“Nothing before nine o’clock,” Ralph said. “We all need at least eight hours of sleep, more if we can get it. Then we pack up, check out, go to the Boltons’, and pick up Yune. From there to the Marysville Hole.”
“Wrong direction, if we want Claude to think we’re flying home,” Alec said. “He’ll wonder why we aren’t headed back to Plainville.”
“Okay, we tell Claude and Lovie we have to go to Tippit first because… mmm, I don’t know, we have some more shopping to do at Home Depot?”
“Pretty thin,” Howie said.
Alec asked, “Who was the state cop who came out to talk to Claude? Do you remember?”
Ralph didn’t offhand, but he had kept case-notes on his iPad. Routine was routine, even when chasing the boogeyman. “His name was Owen Sipe. Corporal Owen Sipe.”
“Okay. You tell Claude and his momma—which is the same thing as telling the outsider, if he really can get inside Claude’s head—that you got a call from Corporal Sipe saying that a man roughly matching Claude’s description is wanted in Tippit for questioning in a robbery or a car theft or maybe a home invasion. Yune can verify that Claude was at home all night—”
“Not if he was out sleeping in the gaze-bo,” Ralph said.
“You’re telling me he wouldn’t have heard Claude start his car? That thing needed a new muffler two years ago.”
Ralph smiled. “Point taken.”
“Okay, so you say we’re going to Tippit to check it out, and if it leads nowhere, we’re going to fly back to Flint City. Sound okay?”
“Sounds fine,” Ralph said. “Just let’s be damn sure Claude doesn’t see the flashlights and hardhats.”
15
As eleven o’clock came and went, Ralph was lying on the swaybacked bed in his room, knowing he should turn out the light and not doing it. He had called Jeannie and gabbed with her for almost half an hour, some of it about the case, some of it about Derek, most of it inconsequential shit. After that he tried the TV, thinking one of Lovie Bolton’s late-night preachers might work as a sleeping pill—or at least quiet the constant rat-run of his thoughts—but all he got when he turned it on was a message saying OUR SATELLITE IS CURRENTLY DOWN, THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
He was reaching for the lamp when a light knock came at the door. He crossed the room, reached for the knob, thought better of it, and tried the peephole. It turned out to be useless, clogged with dirt or something.
“Who is it?”
“Me,” Holly said. Her voice was as small as her knock.
He opened the door. Her tee-shirt was untucked and the coat of her suit, which she had put on against the late-night chill, hung down comically on one side. Her short gray hair flew in the rising wind. She was holding her iPad. Ralph suddenly realized he was in his boxers, with the buttonless fly no doubt gaping slightly. He remembered something they used to say when they were kids: Who gave you a license to sell hotdogs?
“I woke you up,” she said.