Ammie, Come Home (20 page)

And Pat was facing it. Ruth felt a touch of dim pride that penetrated even her terror as she saw him stop after the first automatic withdrawal. His face was hard and expressionless; his feet were planted widely apart, like those of a man thigh-deep in racing water.

By contrast, Bruce made a pitiable showing. Stumbling, making odd inarticulate sounds, dragging Sara by the hand, he retreated toward the tall French doors at the end of the room. When he reached them he dropped Sara's hand and began struggling with the catch that held the windows closed. The clumsiness of fear frustrated his intent; the catch refused to give, and when Bruce brought his fist down on it, his hand slipped, slamming into one of the glass panes. The glass broke, letting in a gust of freezing rain; and Bruce pulled back a hand that was streaming blood from half a dozen cuts. He held it up before his face, staring blindly.

“Bruce—wait—” Ruth found speech incredibly difficult. Her vocal cords, like her other muscles, seemed frozen.

The boy heard her; he whirled around, his movements still erratic and undisciplined. Then his expression changed, altering his features so terribly that if Ruth had met him on the street she would not have recognized him. He plunged forward; his hands clawed at Pat's sleeve.

“Pat…don't. For God's sake—”

“It can't hurt,” Pat said dully. “Can't hurt me. Let go. Got to do something….”

“Don't…no…stop…. Pat, wait, let me tell you—”

Pat's rigidly controlled expression did not change. He simply lifted his heavy shoulders and heaved. Bruce went reeling back, missing the fireplace by two feet, and hit the wall so hard that one of the pictures fell with a crash.

There had been no sound from Sara; Ruth could see her at the edge of her vision, standing near the window, staring blank-faced. Ruth's time-sense was completely distorted; the scene seemed to have been going on forever, yet she knew everything was happening very quickly. Pat was on the move even before Bruce's body struck the wall. The column of darkness did not move as he came toward it. It waited. It did not menace or threaten, rather it shrank in on itself like—

Like a coiled spring. The analogy completed itself in Ruth's muddled brain, as the spring was released.

Standing off to one side, she had a clear unobstructed view of what happened. But at the final moment something fogged her eyes—mercifully, for such things were not meant to be seen, could not be seen in safety. When her vision cleared, the coiling smoke had disappeared. But it was not gone. It looked at her from Pat's eyes.

Ruth heard the whistling exhalation of Sara's breath, and the sound of her body dropping to the floor. She wished she could faint too. Pat was a big man, tall and heavily built. He looked bigger now. His hunched shoulders seemed hulking and swollen.

The eyes—not his eyes—saw her, and were indifferent, and passed on. But that one fleeting contact with the venom of the Adversary, now concentrated and focused, wiped every emotion out of her except for a sneaking, cowardly relief: She was not in Its direct path; It did not want her. She fell to her knees, huddled like an embryo, making herself small. Anything to avoid meeting, ever again, the blackness of its regard.

From first to last her heart had not measured more than a dozen beats. It took Bruce that long to get his breath back and to move out, from the opposite wall, into Its path.

Movement seemed difficult for It. Its steps dragged. It stopped when Bruce barred Its way, and raised Its heavy head to look at him; and Ruth saw him jerk back and fling a hand up before his face. She knew the impact of that gaze; and she knew the effort it cost Bruce to stay where he was, on his feet, and to lower his shielding hand. The change in his demeanor, from the terrified panic which had driven him, woke an answering spark in Ruth's brain. Now that the thing he most feared had happened—the thing he alone of them all had seemed to foresee—he was ready to face it. Slowly and painfully Ruth began to drag herself erect. That brand of courage demanded all the support she could give it.

Even as she swayed to her feet the final transformation came, the great overshadowing of the present by the shapes of the dead past. The bodies of the two men seemed to waver and grow insubstantial. They were the same, but not quite the same; surely, she knew, these two, or two others identical in intent, had stood like this, in silent confrontation, once before. The older man, a heavy, hulking shape, head lowered like a bull ready to charge, fists clenched, arms dangling at his sides; the younger, slender and poised in breeches and ruffled shirt, the long blade in his right hand ready but not yet raised, his coat discarded in the warmth of a spring night….

A gust of air from the shattered pane struck Ruth's face, and her mind went reeling; for the air was not the damp cold air of a winter night in Washington. It was balmy and fragrant with the scent of lilac: the smell of an April night which had passed out of time two centuries before.

“
CALL HIM
,
RUTH
.”

The voice came from far away. Ruth shook her head, feeling the soft spring breeze against her closed eyelids. The fragrance of lilac filled the room, heavy and sweet.

“Call him. Call his name. Ruth, please. Help me.”

The voice was nearer now, and somehow familiar. It was a man's voice. The wind touched her face….

The wind was cold, carrying rain. Ruth opened her eyes.

She was looking straight at Bruce, who stood swaying on unsteady feet, his face ashen and his eyes fixed unblinkingly on that other face, as if the force of his gaze held it back. Then the looming form took a step forward, and Bruce's right arm lifted. Blood still dripped from the cuts on his hand; his stained fingers were tight around the handle of the poker from the fireplace set.

“Call him, Ruth, see if you can get through to him…. I don't want to have to kill him….”

As the Other moved again, Bruce fell back a step, casting a frantic glance over his shoulder. He could not retreat much farther. Behind him was the closed window, and Sara, sprawled like a dead woman against the wall.

“Pat,” Ruth said. “Pat, it's me, Ruth. Can you hear me?”

For an instant she thought the heavy shoulders shifted. Only for an instant.

“Pat—darling. Listen to me. Pat….”

“It's no use,” Bruce said. “Ruth, get out of the way. It's as strong as an ox. It doesn't know you…. God!”

The last word was a gasp, half-drowned by the rush of the heavy body across the carpet. It was quick, for all Its bulk, and Bruce was slowed by a fatal handicap—the body It occupied. Ruth had not even thought of it as Pat; it was so unlike him in all the significant ways. Yet the head at which Bruce aimed the poker was Pat's red head. He brought the weapon up in a whistling arc; but he could not bring it down. And in the instant of hesitation, the thing was upon him.

They went crashing backwards together. The impact of the fall, and of the heavy body on top of him, knocked Bruce out as he hit the floor. He lay still, face upturned and eyes closed, the poker fallen from his hand, while the blunt fingers settled around his bared throat, and squeezed.

Ruth was so close that she could see the separate reddish hairs on the backs of the hands, red-gold lifted threads in the lamplight—the same light which fell brilliantly on Bruce's face; and she watched while his cheeks and forehead turned from white to mottled red, and darkened.

Forever afterward she was to wonder what will guided her hand—blind luck, or unconscious knowledge, or—something else. The object her groping fingers lifted from the table at her side was heavy enough to stun, and necessity guided her aim. But there was this, and she would never forget it: As the Book left her grasp, the thing that crouched on the floor reared up, lifting clawed hands in menace or protest, Its face upraised, Its mouth stretched in a snarl. The massive volume struck It full in the face, obliterating Its features momentarily, and then dropped back onto Bruce's chest. The Thing followed the book down, falling flat across the boy's body; but not before Ruth had caught one glimpse of a face which was, once again, the face she knew, gone lax in unconsciousness.

She ran forward, avoiding the fallen figures. The window latch gave sweetly, and she shrank back, throwing her arms up before her face, as the wind shrieked in, snatching the double leaves of the window and hurling them back against the wall. The lash of the cold rain stung her forehead; the blowing drapes bellied out like live things.

She heard Sara groan and stir as the freezing damp struck her face, but she had no time for lesser casualties. Pat was lying face down on the floor, arms out above his head. She caught him under the arms and tugged. Nothing happened, his dead weight was too much for her. She transferred her grip to one wrist, straightened up, and leaned back on her heels. The heavy body moved a few inches.

Ruth gasped with terror and frustration. She had to get him out of here before he woke, and the rough handling itself might rouse him faster.

She heard a gasp and a whimper from Sara, and turned. The girl was on her feet, one hand twisted in the lashing folds of the drapes. She was staring wide-eyed at Bruce. The dusky color had faded from the boy's face, but the marks of Pat's hands, and nails, were plain on his throat. He wouldn't be of any help for a while, Ruth thought coldly. She reached out and caught Sara by a strand of black hair as the girl stumbled past her.

“He'll be all right, there's no time for that now, I need help,” she said, in one breath, as Sara's head jerked back and she gave a squeal of pain. “Take his other arm. Hurry, for God's sake, before he wakes up.”

Sara gave one agonized look at Bruce and obeyed.

Between them they got Pat as far as the windows, and there Sara got some of her wits back.

“He'll catch pneumonia,” she said, between chattering teeth. “And it's t-t-ten feet down into the rosebushes. Ruth, you can't—”

“Oh, yes, I can.” Pat was beginning to mutter and move. Fear gave the final surge of strength to Ruth's muscles. She grabbed his legs and shifted him so that he lay across the ledge; after that one good hard push was all it took.

From the sounds, she could tell that he had landed, and hard. She turned on Sara and caught her by the shoulders.

“Out you go,” she said, and shoved.

She did not wait to see what happened, but whirled in the same movement and ran back to where Bruce lay. She dropped to her knees beside him; but her shaking concern was not for the unconscious boy. It was the poker in his hand that she wanted. If Pat tried to climb back through the window she would have to use it.

The sounds from outside, audible even over the sigh of the wind, were reassuring. Pat was plainly awake now, he was thrashing and bellowing in the bushes; but the tone of his fury was obviously, blessedly, Pat and no one else.

The handle of the poker was unpleasantly sticky when Ruth touched it; when she pulled her fingers back, they were smeared with red. Bruce's hand had stopped bleeding, but it was a gory mess. She had not been able to bring herself to look at his face for, despite her reassurance of Sara, she feared he was dead. But she could not leave him without so much as a glance; pity and affection and profound gratitude finally broke the shell of ice that had shielded her, and the tears began to slide down her cheeks as she shifted, still on her knees, to where she could touch his face.

 

II

The car slid jerkily through a red light and went on.

“It's a good thing there isn't any traffic,” Ruth said, with a shaky laugh. “I'm not at my best tonight.”

Her efforts at conversation fell flat. In the back seat Sara was too preoccupied with Bruce to hear an explosion. He was awake, but his sole remark so far had been to the effect that his head felt as if it were about to fall off and roll across the floor. Ruth was not too concerned about him; since the moment when her hand had touched his cheek and his eyes had opened and stared quizzically at her, she had simply thanked heaven for the resilience of youth.

It was Pat she was worried about—Pat, who sat hunched and silent beside her, his head bent and his eyes focused on his own limp hands, where they hung between his knees. One of the reasons why she had run the red light was the certainty that a sudden halt would have flung him against the windshield.

It took them some time to get settled down after they reached Pat's house. First aid and dry clothes were the immediate needs, and Ruth had to tend to the dog, whom she had found shivering and pathetically subdued by the front door and had bundled into the car with the other wounded. Lady seemed to feel that a hearty snack would do wonders for her nerves, so Ruth took the hint, and also scrambled eggs and made coffee for the others. Finally she had them all settled down before the fire. Sara, in her green velvet, looked unbelievably normal. Seeing her clear eyes and unmarked skin, Ruth felt another deep surge of gratitude for the boy who occupied the couch.

They had bedded Bruce down though Ruth suspected, from the gleam in his eye, that he had no intention of remaining down. He was the most battered of the lot; there was a lump the size of an egg on the back of his head, and the marks on his throat had begun to darken.

Pat's injuries were superficial. His face and arms were crisscrossed with scratches from the rosebushes. All down the bridge of his nose, extending across his forehead, was a curious reddening and roughening of the skin. Ruth told herself that this must have come from the harsh nap of the carpet when she had dragged him. Oddly enough, however, there was no corresponding patch on his chin, and this area, it seemed to her, would have borne the brunt of the rubbing.

Whatever its origin, the physical manifestation was only a chafing of the skin. What frightened Ruth was the look in Pat's eye, and the frightening formality of his manner. He moved like something that had to be wound up, and was almost run down. It was not the overshadowing that she feared now. She knew what was tormenting him; and she gave Bruce a look of furious reproach when he said in his frog's croak, “You've got a grip like a wrestler, Pat. No more soapboxes for me for a few days. Talk about a fate worse than death!”

“Bruce—” Ruth began.

“It's all right,” Pat said. “We might as well discuss the fact. The fact that tonight I tried to kill Bruce and almost succeeded.”

“It wasn't you,” Sara said.

Pat lifted his hands before his face and looked at them.

“Your hands but not your will,” Ruth said intensely. “You're no more responsible than someone under hypnosis.”

“A hypnotized subject,” Pat quoted, “cannot be made to do anything against his will.”

It was as if he had plucked the words out of a box of alphabet letters and arranged them on the table for their inspection.

After a moment Bruce said, “I've heard that theory questioned, as a matter of fact. But it's irrelevant. You weren't hypnotized. You were being used, just as a gun is used by the man who squeezes the trigger.” The lecture ended in a squawk as his vocal cords protested, and he added, in a voice which was less formal and far more convincing, “Hell, Pat, don't be morbid. I know you think I'm a pain in the neck, but you wouldn't try to kill me under any circumstances, in your right mind or out of it.”

There was a clicking sound from the hall, like steel knitting needles, and they all looked up as the dog padded sedately into the room. She stood next to the fireplace regarding them all in turn, with her red tongue lolling; then she walked over to Pat and collapsed at his feet with a weary sigh, putting her chin on his shoe.

Pat reached down and patted the dog's big head. When he straightened up his expression was almost normal.

“I wonder what she thinks of it all,” he said. “Has she already forgotten, or does she shrug mentally and write it all off as human folly, beyond a sensible dog's comprehension?”

“No,” Ruth said with conviction. “She's welcoming you back. She knows that wasn't you, back there. Pat, you have no idea—I can't explain—how alien It was.”

“Trouble was,” Bruce croaked, “it was your body wrapped around the damn thing. I couldn't bring myself to smash your skull.”

“I appreciate your consideration, believe me. But if you didn't stop me, who did? I feel like Snoopy, I don't even know what was going on. I could feel the thing come into me, and it was just as Sara said—something pouring in, filling me up, something that didn't quite fit. That was a bad moment, the thing was so ravenously triumphant; and after that I don't remember a thing.”

“I stopped you,” Ruth said. She held out her hands. “So don't give us any more of your melodrama. How the hell do you think I feel about these hands of mine?”

“Language, language.” Pat grinned at her and took her shaking hands into his own scratched palms. “When I came up out of that hellish rosebush you were hovering in the window with the poker. Would you really have used it?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.” He lifted her hands to his face and then held them on his knee. Ruth moved closer and the dog, drowsing, made a soft grumbling noise.

“I missed the exciting part myself,” Bruce remarked. “What did you do, Ruth? Not that I mind being outsmarted by a mere woman, but still….”

“I threw the Book at him,” Ruth said, and then gave an astonished gasp of laughter. “Sorry about that…. I did, literally. It was the big family Bible.”

“That must have been some pitch,” Pat said. “I didn't think the Book was massive enough to knock me out. It's big, and clumsy, but….”

“I don't know!” Ruth exclaimed. “I wonder…. But it couldn't be that. The crucifix didn't work….”

“I wonder myself,” Bruce said. He was sitting up, despite Sara's objections; wrapped in one of Pat's wilder robes, a silk paisley affair that must have been a Christmas present because it had so obviously never been worn, he looked like an Eastern prince instead of a Spanish grandee.

“You know what really burns me?” Pat asked. “Not my attempted murder so much as my incredible stupidity. Bruce, you knew what was going to happen; you tried to stop me; I remember that much. You expected this.”

“Suspect is the word, not expect. But—my God!—I died a thousand deaths trying to get you out of that room before it happened. I was sweating bullets.”

“Why the hell didn't you tell me?”

Bruce flung out his hands. His eyes were wide and dark with the memory of that terrible frustration.

“How could I? You wouldn't have believed me, any of you. I didn't have a fact to my name, just a crazy hunch…. And you're so bloody bull-headed, Pat, you'd have stuck around just to show me.”

“Hmmmph,” Pat muttered. He cocked his head, eyebrows lifted, and studied the younger man with unwilling respect. “What made you suspect?”