“You are lucky,” Riley said to Blaine. “Not fearing them, you may be safe from them. A dog will bite a man who is afraid of it, but lick the hand of one who is not afraid.”
“The answer’s easy, then,” Blaine told him… “Do not be afraid.”
But it was impossible advice to a man like Riley.
Night after night he sat on the right-hand seat as Blaine drove through the darkness, shivering in terror like a spooky hound, grasping the gun loaded with its silver buckshot.
There were alarms and frights — the swoop of owl, the running of a fox across the road, an imagined roadside shadow, all became an evil out of some darker night, while the howling of coyotes became the wailing of a banshee, hunting for a victim.
But there was more than imagined terror. There was the shadow shaped like a man, but a man no longer, twisting and turning in a lazy dance from a high branch above the thicket; there was the blackened ruins of the roadside farm, with the smoke-streaked chimney standing like an accusing finger pointing up to heaven; there was the smoke from the tiny campfire that Blaine stumbled on as he followed up a creek hunting down a spring while Riley wrestled with the balky spark plugs. Blaine had been moving quietly, and they had heard him just too late to vanish before he caught sight of them, fleeing like wraiths up the timbered slopes of the looming mountain spur.
He had stepped into the tiny, tramped-down circle of the camp site, with its small cooking fire and the skillet on its side, with four half-cooked trout lying in the trampled grass, with the wadded blankets and the comforter that had served as beds, with the rudely built brush shelter as refuge from the rain.
He had knelt beside the fire and righted the skillet. He had picked up the fish and brushed the twigs and grass off them and replaced them in the pan.
And he had thought to call out to the hiders, to try to reassure them, but he knew that it was useless, for they were past all trust.
They were hunted animals. Hunted animals in this great United States which for years had valued freedom, which in its later years had stood as a forthright champion before the entire world for the rights of man.
He had knelt there, torn by an anger and a pity, and he felt the smarting of his eyes. He bunched up his fists and rubbed at his eyes, and the moist knuckles smeared streaks of dirt across his face.
He had stayed there for a while, but finally he had risen and gone down the creek again, forgetting that he had hunted for a spring, which no doubt had been only a few feet from the camp.
When he got back to the truck, he did not mention what he’d found to Riley.
They drove across the deserts and labored across the mountains and finally came to the great high plains where the wind came knifing down without a hill to stop it, without a tree to break it, a naked stretch of land that lay flat and hard to a far horizon.
Blaine rode in the seat alongside Riley, slouched and relaxed against the jolting of the truck. The sun beat down, and the wind was dry, and off to the north dust devils rose and spun above a dried-up river bed.
Riley drove hunched tight against the wheel, with his arms braced against the chuckholes and the ruts. His face was tense and at times a nervous tic twitched the muscles of his cheek.
Even in the daytime, Blaine thought, the man is still afraid, still runs his endless race with darkness.
Had it to do, he wondered, with the cargo in the truck? Not once had Riley said what he was hauling, not once had he inspected it. There was a heavy padlock on the rear door of the rig, and the padlock clanged and jangled as the truck lumbered on the road.
There had been a time or two when Blaine had been on the verge of asking, but there had been a certain reticence that had prevented it. Not anything, perhaps, that Riley had said or done or any way he’d acted, but, rather, his studied casualness in all these areas.
And after all, Blaine told himself, it was none of his affair. He did not care what might be in the truck. His only interest was in the truck itself; with every turn of a wheel it was carrying him where he had to go.
Riley said: “If we get a good run tonight, we’ll reach the river in the morning.”
“The Missouri?”
Riley nodded. “If we don’t break down again. If we make good time.”
But that night they met the witches.
FOURTEEN
The first they saw of them was a flicker in the fan of light the headlamps threw out along the road and then they saw them flying in the moonlight. Not flying, actually, for they had no wings, but moving through the air as a fish would move through water, and graceful as only flying things can be.
There was a moment when they might have been moths flying in the lights or night-swooping birds diving in the sky, but once the mind had its instant of utter disbelief and after that, of human rationalization, there was no doubt of what they were.
They were humans flying. They were levitators. They were witches and there was a coven of them.
In the seat beside him, Blaine saw Riley thrust the shotgun out the open window. Blaine slammed on the brakes.
The gun went off, the sound of the report blasting in the cab like a thunderbolt.
The car skidded to a halt, slantwise across the road. Blaine grabbed at Riley’s shoulder and jerked him off his balance. With the other hand he jerked the gun away.
He caught a glimpse of Riley’s face, and the man was yammering. His jaw went up and down in a devil’s tattoo and there were little flecks of foam at each corner of his mouth. His eyes were wild and rolling and his face was stiff, with the muscles bunched and tensed, like a grotesque mask. His hooked fingers made clawing motions to get back the gun.
“Snap out of it!” roared Blaine. “They’re only levitators.”
But the word meant nothing to a man like Riley. All reason and all understanding were lost in the roll of fearful thunder that hammered in his brain.
And even as he spoke to Riley, Blaine became aware of voices in the night — soundless voices reaching out to him, a medley of voices that were talking to him.
Friend — -one of us is hit (a line of oozing red across a shapely shoulder) — not bad — he has (a gun with its muzzle limp and drooping and turning suddenly into a rather melancholy and very phallic symbol). Safe — our friend has the gun. Let us get the other (a snarling dog backed into a corner, a skunk with its tail uplifted, a rattler coiled and set to strike).
Wait, yelled Blaine. Wait! Everything’s all right. There’ll be no more shooting.
He pressed down with his elbow against the door latch, and the door swung open. He pushed Riley from him and half fell out of the cab, still clutching the gun. He broke the weapon, and the shells jumped out; he threw the gun into the road and backed against the truck.
Suddenly the night was deadly silent except for the sounds of moaning and of wailing that came from Riley in the cab.
Everything is clear, said Blaine. There is no more danger.
They came plunging down out of the sky, as if they might be jumping from some hidden platform, but they landed lightly on their feet.
They moved slowly forward, catfooted in the night, and they were silent now.
That was a damn fool thing to do, Blaine told them. Next time one of you will get your head blown off (a headless human walking casually with the stump of neck frothing furiously).
He saw that they were young, not out of their teens, and that they wore what appeared to be bathing suits and he caught the sense of fun and the scent of prank.
They moved in cautiously, and he sought for other signs, but there were no other signs.
Who are you? one asked.