Dark Rain (11 page)

THIRTEEN

There are times when the work that I do these days mirrors, far too closely, what I used to. And the worst thing, always, about working as a cop?

The waiting.

We didn’t go back to the office. No, we headed over to my house instead. I got coffee brewing. Cassie made some sandwiches from the odd items I had lying around my fridge. Then we sat out on the front porch, waiting for whatever came down on us next.

I’d gotten used to it down the years, learning to be patient when I needed to. But Cass had never got the hang of that particular trick. She was an incorrigible pacer, twitcher, fiddler. She kept getting up for no particular reason, looking round, then sitting down again. Sometimes, she would walk the whole way over to the sidewalk and peer down the street, like she was expecting to see something headed in our direction. It was as if she’d rather something bad happened than nothing at all.

It was fairly exhausting watching her. In spite of which, I sympathized again. I understood her tension and the slow burn in her eyes. We’d both much rather have been direct and aggressive, gone straight after this intruder. But we couldn’t do that when we didn’t even know where he was hiding.

All that we could do was wait for him to move again. And hopefully, he’d do it before he had got much stronger.

I’d brought a scanner out and turned the dial until I found the police channel. Nothing much at all seemed to be going on. A placid murmuring, edged with a soft fuzz of static, drifted out across the still afternoon air. Any hint of wind was gone. Birds made short hops from the nearby branches to my roof. You could hear a few kids yelling happily, somewhere in the distance.

“You’re certain,” asked Cassie, “he’ll attack again?”

My face tensed up a little. “I’m not sure of anything,”

“Then …?”

I thought of that first encounter. The dry confidence in Saruak’s tone. The way those eyes of his had studied and then challenged me.

“He didn’t strike me as the type to bide his time, that’s all. If he comes at us again, he’ll do it pretty quickly.”

Then I swung my gaze away from her, across the rooftops of the town. It pained me to see how normal looking it all was. On the surface, another extremely pleasant day. Sunlight dappled the houses and the sidewalk, fading a little every so often. I looked further up. The sky was littered with small, fluffy clouds. But they were barely moving either, drifting only very slowly, like abandoned little boats in some calm harbor.

A bee went humming past. So placid, the entire place.  Just like any other quiet New England town. I’d never been to any others, so I had to take a guess at that. But everything seemed so serene.

Except … that might not be the case a few hours later on. I shook my head, scarcely able to believe that anything as bad as last evening might bear down on us once again.

Obviously bored out of her skull, Cass had got back on her cell phone and was talking to Pam again. Who – of course – wanted to know what was going on. And to give Cassie her due, she was non-committal about that. The same happened when she phoned up Bella, one of her close-knit little coterie of girlfriends.

What, you thought she only had me? She’d have probably gone crazy a long time ago without her small clan of bosom buddies.

You could hear the faintest hum of traffic from downtown. Very tiny in the sky, a jet plane was going overhead. They pass by every so often, always quite high up. I could hear its engines, like a soft murmur of thunder from a continent away.

I wondered if they could see us when they looked down. Watching those occasional planes, knowing that I’d probably never ride on one, always made me feel slightly lonely, lost and cut adrift.

There were more pressing things to worry about now, however.

Saruak had to be looking down at us, as well. Of that there was no doubt. And with precisely what intention?

The sun dropped lower. All the shadows round us stretched, and the gentlest of breezes finally began to blow. The scanner kept murmuring in the background, but it had nothing significant to say. There was no trouble.

The calm before the storm. It put me in mind of another afternoon, not unlike this one. I’d been driving watchfully down Crowland Street, still a cop back then.

I dropped back a little in my chair, letting my head settle. Then my eyes drifted shut.

And it was all there, flooding through my memory again.

It was four months after Goad had arrived. And it seemed as though his presence here had triggered something. We in the P.D. had never been so busy for the past few weeks. People, casting spells, had simply vanished, or turned into things that they’d not wanted to. One middle-aged couple had set half their street alight, and we still weren’t sure if it was just an accident. The Circe girl, who had been locked up months ago, had managed to conjure herself out, and it had taken us nearly a week to find her. And a certain Mrs. Carey, up on Johnston Avenue, had decided that a basilisk would b
e the ideal pet for her backyard.

“It’s just a
small
one,” she kept telling us.

The Landing had become a pretty frantic place for those in law enforcement. And nobody had ridden double-handed to a car for days. There were too few officers for that, and too much going on.

Except the hubbub had all died away, this particular afternoon. Things had, without warning, settled down. It was as if all the previous mayhem had never taken place. I was quietly cruising around, taking a grateful breather.

I was about to turn right onto Vine, when my radio gave a crackle.

“Ross?”

The dispatcher was Elvie, who I liked to kid around with. I picked up my handset.

“Talk to me.”

“We’ve got reports of a possible disturbance.”

Possible?

“Can you try to be more specific? What’s that mean?”

“Nothing seems to have happened yet. But some sort of weirdness might be going down.”

I said, “Surprise me”. And was smiling gently, till she gave me the address.

I hit my brakes, dead in the middle of the pavement, and a pick-up truck behind me hooted and went past.

“That’s
your
street, isn’t it?” Elvie was asking me nervously across the ether, her voice blurry-sounding and unreal.

My head was spinning by this time. Because it wasn’t only my own street. It was the house next door to mine.

And my very next thought was,
Goad!

I didn’t even put my siren on, but was screeching up in front of my house several minutes later. Slamming my wheels across the curb, then stumbling out. My hand was on my holster, but I didn’t draw my weapon straight away. I had two small kids to think of, didn’t I?

“
Alicia?
”

No answer came. I stared around. The entire block was silent, with no signs of anything amiss. But then I peered a little closer at the front door of my house. It was slightly ajar, and my wife never left it open.

“
Tammy? Pete?
”

Someone came out clumsily onto his own porch, at that point. Joe Norton, two houses down.

“What’s happening?” I yelled at him.

His face was like a porcelain mask, and it occurred to me that maybe
I
was frightening him.

“It might be nothing, Ross, but we thought you ought to know. Some half hour back, Alicia and the kids went into Mrs. McGaffrey’s place. There was something weird about them. And they haven’t come out yet.”

I could only stare at him with pure frustration, wondering what was going through his head.

“Why take so long reporting it?”

“It didn’t seem … to be actual
trouble
as such. Just peculiar, that’s all.”

When I looked over at my neighbor’s front door, it was open too. So I forgot all about Joe and his lack of action, at that point

Hurried toward it at a crouch, drawing my firearm carefully. I kept half of my attention on the windows. Was I being watched? But there was no sign of any movement beyond them. Jason Goad’s room, I reminded myself, was out back in the loft.

I jabbed at the door with my free hand. And it swung wide open soundlessly. Shadows and the scattered shapes of furniture were all that I could see inside. I went through into the living room, my heart pounding with every step. My surroundings were clean and tidy but threadbare, the hallmark of genteel poverty.

Of my family? Of Goad, though? Not a sign.

“Mrs. McGaffrey?”

I noticed her suddenly, in the corner. She had been like another shadow, until then. Was sitting in a rocking chair, but didn’t move or look toward me, even when I spoke.

Her eyes were open, but they seemed to be unfocussed. And I thought at first she might be dead. But when I ventured over, put two fingers to her throat, I could feel an even, steady pulse.

She didn’t respond in the slightest to my touch. Had she been put into some kind of a trance?

A low creaking took my attention to the ceiling. Leaving the old woman there, I started heading up.

The only light on in the entire place was up there at the very top. I took the next couple of flights three risers at a time, my chest pounding like an engine, my lungs tight against my ribs.

Something was completely out of whack. All the years that we’d been neighbors, Mrs. McGaffrey had used energy-saving bulbs. She scarcely had the cash to pay her regular bills. And so the windows of her house had always had this chilly, warmthless, glow.

Except … this new light that I could see was pale but intensely bright.

I reached the top, a far more narrow landing. Looked at the scene beyond Goad’s open doorway.

And my entire body froze …

“Ross!” Cassie was yelling at me.

My eyes snapped back open. Jeez, how long had I been dozing? How much time had passed?

I took in my surroundings rather numbly. The sun had dropped the whole way to the rooftops, scattering them with its reddish glow. A few people were returning from work, and there were more cars on the drives than there’d been earlier.

Cass was on her feet again and stooping over my scanner.

“Ross, there’s something going down!”

Dreams and reality merged for an instant. Then I pulled myself together and sat stiffly up.

We listened to the babbling coming from the set.

“Pulling onto Greenwood Terrace.”

It was Davy Quinn’s voice I was hearing. Greenwood Terrace was a mere half dozen blocks from Cray’s Lane, at the northern edge of Garnerstown. Not
there
again?

“There’s
people running everywhere!” Davy was shouting. “Some of them are injured. They seem to be coming from the church. Get back-up here, for chrissake!”

We could hear hurried, crunching footsteps next. St. Nevitt’s was on Greenwood Terrace, I knew. And it had a gravel drive. But … a church? This was a Wednesday

“There’s dead on the steps here!” Davy yelled. “A lot of blood. Some people really badly injured! I … there’s something moving! Oh my God, what
is
that?”

There was a clatter and a hiss, then the transmission went completely dead.

We both started running, me for my car and Cass for her Harley.

FOURTEEN

The light was starting to fail properly, the sky phasing through increasingly deeper shades of vermilion and the shadows growing dense. A few streetlights were coming on, but not casting a proper glow as yet. Everything looked indistinct, half-formed. I squinted through my windshield.

Cassie had already gone a good long way ahead. But me? My knuckles seemed to almost crack as I worked the steering wheel. I could still get plenty of speed out of my old Cadillac, but I had to jam the pedal down the whole way to the floor to do it.

All the streets were quiet until I reached the area I was headed for.

Greenwood Terrace was the precise opposite. There was howling pandemonium every place you looked. Frightened, damaged people milling everywhere. Some were clutching handkerchiefs or even hanks of clothing to their wounds. There were screams and siren wails and urgent shouts. Every emergency vehicle in town seemed to be descending on this spot. Squad cars, ambulances, and even fire trucks were pulling up the whole time. Householders along the way were coming out and trying to help.

There was plenty of strobing red light, just like yesterday evening. It broke the scene around me into jerking, ragged fragments.

I could see, out beyond the church, Hobart’s dark blue Pontiac approaching. Cassie had her shotgun ready and was advancing steadily toward the building’s gaping doors.

I clambered out. It looked like a bomb had gone off here.

All the windows in the building had been shattered, except there was very little glass on the surrounding verges. Had the windows shattered inward … what could have caused that?

Faces stared up desperately at me. A lot of the injured were just sitting on the ground by this time, some of them waiting for help, others unable to stand. A few had passed out, or maybe worse. But the paramedics and cops were moving quickly. The worst cases were already being attended to.

I leaned in a couple of times to see what damage had been done. And was once again surprised. From my fight with the Dralleg, I’d been expecting clean straight cuts in almost every case. Parallel rows of them. But that was not what I was looking at. These people had jagged wounds, uneven lacerations. One poor guy had had a lump of flesh the size of an apple torn out of his scalp and was clutching it, still conscious, groaning.

“What happened?” was the question being asked by the authorities.

But they didn’t seem to be getting any coherent answers. These folks were either babbling or numb, trapped at opposite ends of shock’s narrow spectrum.

Whatever had come down on them, I felt pretty certain it was
not
the Dralleg this time.

A middle-aged woman was having a large shard of glass pulled out of her wrist. A friend of hers was trying to soothe her. Which provided me, at least, with a partial answer. I started wondering if those smashed windows were the only wreckage here.

I checked my gun before returning it to my pocket. Then I headed for the porch myself.

But I didn’t quite make it. Saul Hobart came flashing across my field of vision, moving very fast for such an obviously ungainly man. There were corpses up ahead of us, as Davy’s last report had said. Except that, by this stage, there was one in uniform as well.

Something heavy formed in my gut. Davy Quinn had joined the victims he was trying to help. And we’d gone out for beers together maybe twenty, thirty times.

His radio was lying by one open hand, the fingers curled. And there was his gun, still in his grasp. He’d gone sprawling backward on the steps. His face was tipped to one side and his eyes were wide, reflective. His expression was frozen.

There was something of a pale brass color sticking out through the middle of his chest. And I thought at first it was a knife, until I realized it had no proper handle.

It was a narrow crucifix. My eyes stung, looking down.

Saul knelt over the man, feeling for a pulse. And then his mouth came open. I guess he groaned. There was too much noise around us to be sure.

A pair of paramedics was approaching, but he waved them back. His head stayed down. Perhaps he just didn’t want anyone to see his face.

I tried to think of something to say, but it wasn’t only my throat that had gone rigid. It was everything, even my mind.

In the end, I simply reached down and touched the man on the elbow.

He didn’t respond, at first. But then he suddenly stood up, easing back his shoulders and then straightening his tie. His eyes were damp around the edges, but he didn’t even try to wipe them.

“Okay,” he muttered quietly. “Let’s find out what did all this.”

Cass was at the doorway but, unusually for her, had not gone in. She was standing stock still on the very threshold, peering inside. What had stopped her?

We went up to join her, picking our way through the bodies and the debris. There was plenty of the latter, a great deal of scattered glass. One of the cadavers nearest the entrance looked like a porcupine, there were so many shards protruding from it.

This was not the time to focus on details like that. I tried to keep my feelers out and take in my surroundings. One thing, I was sure of right away. This was dissimilar to last night in several aspects. In the first place, there were plenty more survivors. There had been no walking wounded in Cray’s Lane. And second, all these victims seemed to have been felled by objects, rather than a living thing.

There was a big pewter goblet lying by a woman’s head. Her skull was partly crushed. Had Saruak simply hurled it at her?

Another victim had a narrow metal curtain rod jammed in between his ribs. It looked to me like every inanimate object in St. Nevitt’s had, somehow, come alive.

Behind us, an RLKB television crew was rolling up. But … were we still in any danger? I took my gun out again, Saul following my cue.

When I stepped forward, something crunched under my heel. Staring down, I saw a crystal on a narrow length of cord. It had been dropped in all the panic.

They were scattered all over the place, when I looked closer, as were all the stones and amulets that people employ when using magic. The good folks of Raine’s Landing might still worship at the altar of a single God. But they bring along these trinkets too, since God is not the only power they believe in.

We joined Cass, either side of her. All three of us stared in.

With no moon up yet, the interior was pitch dark. All the lights had obviously been switched off, or else been smashed. But there was just enough illumination filtering in through the high, shattered windows that you could make out shapes after a while.

There were plenty more corpses in here. I thought one of them might be wearing the robes of a pastor. And not one of them so much as twitched – there was not the tiniest moan. They were covered with an even frosting of glass, for all the world like sugar sprinkled on them. And the
smell
in this place. Once again, I found myself trying to avoid breathing through my nose.

But there was more than that, and even worse. The entire pulpit had been ripped away from the far wall. A figure was lying underneath it, obviously crushed. And the body next to that one had apparently been brained with a statue of the Virgin Mary.

My mouth got very dry, but I felt so numb that I didn’t even try to wet my lips.

“See anything?” I asked Cassie.

“Plenty,” she replied.

“Anything moving?”

“Huh-uh. There’s no Dralleg here.”

“What?” Saul blurted. But we just ignored him.

I was still trying, furiously, to figure all this out. Why on earth attack a church? And why, come to that, had there been so many people in it early evening of mid-week?

My gaze drifted to a poster nailed to one side of the door.

THIS EVENING, 6 P.M., it read. PRAYERS FOR OUR GOOD NEIGHBORS IN CRAY’S LANE, WHO THE LORD TOOK TO HIS BOSOM LAST NIGHT.             

It hadn’t been the Lord at all, responsible for that. But I stared round urgently at Hobart.

“Jesus Christ Almighty, Saul! Is this the only place?”

“Speak English. What only place?”

“Where they’re holding a memorial service this evening?”

He gawked at me like he was wondering where I had been all day.

“Hell, no. They’re happening all over town.”

And this was absolutely perfect for our new visitor. We’d gone and played right into his hands. I thought about it. Hundreds of ordinary citizens, all clustered together in a single place. Thoughts elsewhere but on the present, heads bowed blindly as the axe began to fall. How could a creature like Saruak resist the temptation?

If this wasn’t stopped immediately, Cray’s Lane would look like a mere overture in his grand opus, his symphony of destruction.

“You’ve got to break them up!” I yelled.

Saul took a step backward, squinting.

“Are you serious? Why?”

Cass was staring at me too, but in a more receptive way. And maybe it was just a hunch, but my spine was prickling by now, and my thoughts racing.

“This?” I told them, gesturing at the carnage. “It’s going to happen again,
that’s
why.”