Edgewise (32 page)

She was approaching the end of the logging road now. Only a half-mile to go before she hit the main highway. She kept her foot down, but she could feel the Wendigo dragging itself right up to her back bumper.

She glanced around, to make sure that William wasn't choking. As she did so, she became aware that something was running alongside her. At first she thought it was just a shadow, or the reflection of her sleeve in the window. But when she looked again she realized that it was an animal—a great brindled wolf—and it was running so fast that it was keeping up with her.

She turned to the other window. Another wolf was running on the right-hand side of her, a lean gray wolf with eyes that were shining yellow. And in the darkness of the pine trees more wolves were running, most of them on all fours, but some of them upright.

She slewed the Rainier to the left and then to the right. The brindled wolf leapt up at her. She saw its eyes blazing yellow and its teeth bared, and its claws scrabbled against her door. The gray wolf leapt up too, on the other side, and its body thumped against the paintwork.

Now the whole vehicle shook and she heard squeaking, grating noises. The Wendigo had reached the rear bumper and was pulling itself up on to the tailgate. It was hissing like a steam boiler that was just about to explode, and she could hear the flames roaring, too, as they were fanned by the wind.

The Wendigo might be burning, but if it could still crush this SUV, the way that it had crushed Agnes and Ned's Explorer; then she and little William would not only be mangled but incinerated too. Lily began to hyperventilate again—each breath whining as if she were suffering an asthma attack.

The Rainier shook again, so that its suspension bucked and its tires howled on the blacktop. The Wendigo had clawed its way up the tailgate now, and she could see its fiery pincers trying to get a grip on the roof rails. On either side the wolves were running in closer, and still keeping up with her. She couldn't see how many, but there must have been scores of them. Wolves, or
witches
.

She passed the seven-mile mark and she could see lights up ahead. Maybe the wolves wouldn't chase her along the highway. She kept her foot hard down and screamed, “Come on! Come on!” And William started to scream too.

Almost too late she realized that the lights weren't highway lights at all. A huge Winnebago was blocking the entire road ahead of her, with its emergency lights flashing. She blasted her horn but she knew that it wasn't going to get out of her way. She saw a startled man kneeling in the road, changing a tire. She saw a woman lifting her hand up to shield her eyes.

She jammed her foot on the parking brake and spun the wheel all the way round. The Rainier slewed around 180 degrees, its tires all screaming in hysterical chorus. Lily heard a sickening, tumbling noise above her. The blazing Wendigo had fallen from the roof and dropped back on to the road. But almost at once, she felt it tugging at the net again.

She didn't hesitate. She slammed the gearshift into reverse, gunned the engine, and backed up at high speed, with the transmission whinnying like a disobedient horse. She hit the Wendigo with a sharp crunch and pushed it along the road, its fiery claws flailing and its body sliding noisily on the asphalt, until she collided at nearly twenty m.p.h. with the rear end of the Winnebago.

She heard the man and the woman shouting at her, but she didn't care. She shifted into drive and sped forward again—but only thirty or forty yards. Then she jerked to a halt, changed into reverse, and backed up again, smashing the Wendigo into the back of the Winnebago for a second time.

She drove forward, and twisted around in her seat, and now she could see that there were pieces of burning Wendigo all across the road, and underneath the Winnebago, too.

The man was screaming, “What the
fuck
! What the
fuck
! What the fuck did I ever do to you, lady?”

Then the wolves started to gather around the Rainier and jump up on either side, and Lily saw the man and the woman turn and run into the darkness.

The wolves jumped up again and again, and some of them remained standing on their hind legs, stalking around the SUV with a strange, ungainly gait. The large brindled wolf came right up to Lily's window and bared its teeth at her, fogging up the glass. Then she heard their claws tugging at the doorhandles, and she knew that she had to get away from them, fast.

She put her foot on the gas and the Rainier sped back the way she had come, back toward Mystery Lake. Without the Wendigo trailing behind her she could drive much faster, and when she looked from one side of the vehicle to the other, she could see that the wolves were having trouble keeping pace with her. After two or three miles, only the brindled wolf was still running beside her, and then even he dropped back. For about a half-mile she could still see his yellow eyes shining in her rearview mirror, and then he was swallowed by the darkness.

She drove another mile or so, but little William was sobbing so pitifully that she drew over to the side of the road and pulled up. She lifted him over from the backseat and held him tight, shushing him. She could feel that he had wet his romper suit and he was shaking with distress.

“There, there,” she said. “Everything's going to be okay now. Everything's going to be fine. You can come live with me now, and we'll all be happy ever after. How would you like to live with your Aunt Lily, and Tasha, and Sammy? That would be fun, wouldn't it?”

She felt exhausted, and bruised, but at least she knew that she had succeeded in saving her family from the Wendigo. It was probably nothing but ashes now, and those poor people with the Winnebago would never understand what hit them, or why.

After a while, William began to settle down, and she buckled him up in the lap-belt next to her. She tried to call Special Agent Kellogg on her cell, but there was no signal. She needed to drive back to Mystery Lake to find out what had happened to him. She prayed to God that George Iron Walker hadn't hurt him. He might have had a .50-caliber Desert Eagle, but Hazawin had all the powers of the forest, and the spirits that lived in it.

She started the engine again. “Come on, little William. Let's go find Nathan, shall we?”

But as soon as she pulled away, she saw a black shape rushing at her out of the darkness. With a hideous bang, and a flurry of scratching noises, the huge brindled wolf leapt on to the Rainier's sloping hood.

Lily swung the Rainier from one side of the road to the other, trying to shake the wolf off. If it had been a real wolf, it couldn't have clung on. But it was gripping the lip of the hood with human hands, and it had found itself a foothold on the bull bars on the front of the Rainier with human feet, and when it stared at Lily through the windshield with an expression of utter fury, she saw that it had a human face: George Iron Walker, his black oilskin flapping in the Rainier's slipstream like a vampire.

Lily kept on swinging the SUV from side to side, but George Iron Walker was determined not to be shaken loose. He beat on the windshield with his fist, so that his heavy silver rings made a cracking noise on the glass, and he was roaring at her, although she couldn't make out what he was saying.

She swerved wildly for mile after mile. Still George Iron Walker held on, and still he kept beating at the windshield. She tried jamming her brakes on, and then speeding up again, but she couldn't shake him loose.

“—
kill you!”
she heard him shouting at her.

She kept on driving, but she knew that when she reached Mystery Lake, that was the end of the road, and there would be no place left for her to go.

But as the trees began to thin out on either side of the road, she saw two white lights up ahead of her. It was another vehicle, coming toward her. It had to be Nathan.

She switched off her own headlights. She didn't know if George Iron Walker realized what she was planning to do, but he reached inside his coat and took out a large knife with a heavy handle. He began to smash at the windshield again and again, in a frenzy. The safety glass cracked all the way across, and then he smashed it yet again and it shattered and frosted over, and Lily was left blind. All she could see now was George Iron Walker's dark silhouette, and the rapidly brightening headlights of Nathan's Jeep.

“God help us, little William,” she said, and drove straight toward them.

It seemed like forever, but it was probably no more than ten seconds before they collided. Her windshield was filled with dazzling white light and then her airbag burst out in front of her face. She didn't hear anything, and even afterward she didn't remember hearing anything. All she could remember was being thrown violently backward and forward, the way that Jeff used to shake her when he was drunk and angry.

Then there was silence, except for the
tick-tick-ticking,
of gradually cooling metal. She turned to little William and said, “William? Are you OK?”

He looked up at her, wide-eyed, and nodded. For the first time that evening, he had been shocked into silence.

Lily was still sitting behind the wheel when her door was wrenched open with a loud creak. She lifted her arm, ready to defend herself, but it was Special Agent Kellogg.

“Lily? You're not hurt, are you?”

“My nose, that's all.”

“How about junior?”

“He's okay.”

“Here”—he held out his hand to her—“let me help you guys out. It worked then—with the Wendigo?”

“It was touch and go for a while, but yes. It worked. Damn thing was all burned up.”

“The net held?”

“The net held. I think I did some damage to some poor guy's RV. But the net held.”

“That's terrific. You don't know how glad I am to see you.”

Stiffly, Lily climbed out of the Rainier and helped little William out, too.

“George Iron Walker?” she said.

“Sorry?”

“George Iron Walker—he was clinging onto the hood—I couldn't shake him off.

Special Agent Kellogg said nothing but pointed to the front of their collided vehicles. She had hit his Jeep head-on, although he must have braked hard as soon as he saw her coming, because the damage wasn't as devastating as she had thought it would be: a badly dented hood, and a bumper that had dropped off.

But in between the Rainier's bull bars and the Jeep's front grille reared a huge black-and-brindled wolf, its head raised toward the sky, its eyes bulging, its bloody tongue lolling out of the side of its jaws. Its chest had been crushed almost completely flat.

“Don't know how that could have happened,” said Special Agent Kellogg. “Damn thing must have been dancing in the middle of the road.”

Lily held William close to her, so that he wouldn't see it. “George Iron Walker,” she said, huskily.

Special Agent Kellogg frowned at her. “He took off as soon as you did. So did that Native American girl. I don't know how they did it. I turned around to watch you go, and when I turned back they weren't there any more. It was like they'd just vanished.”

Lily started to tremble. “Do you think you could take us home now? God knows what little William here has been through.”

“Sure. We'll need to talk about this, though. Tomorrow, if you'd prefer it. But I'm going to have to find a way of explaining all of this.”

He walked back to his Jeep, reached inside the driver's door and turned the key. The engine started, and he walked back to help Lily into the passenger seat.

“We could always tell the truth,” said Lily.

Special Agent Kellogg climbed into the driver's seat and backed the Jeep away from Lily's Rainier. The brindled wolf remained where it was for a moment, standing upright, its nose pointed toward the treetops. Then it dropped heavily on to the ground, its fur matted with blood, like any other roadkill.

“The truth?” said Special Agent Kellogg, as they drove back along the logging road, between the trees. There was a strong smell of smoke in the air, and smoldering pine. “In my experience, nobody wants to hear the truth. They just want to hear what they're comfortable with.”

The next morning was the first day of the Moon of the Red Grass Appearing. It was a dull, overcast day, but much warmer, and melted snow began to drip from the roof. Lily allowed Tasha and Sammy to sleep late, but little William had woken early and wanted his breakfast.

“Where's Mommy?” he asked her. “Is Mommy coming?”

“Soon, sweetheart.” How do you tell a two-year-old boy that he's never going to see his mommy or his daddy ever again? He doesn't even understand the idea of “heaven.”

But when Tasha and Sammy came down, they both played with him, and made him laugh. Lily stood and watched them, drinking her decaf, and wondered where William had actually been in the time when the Wendigo had taken him.
Asleep
, George Iron Walker had told her.
Dreaming
. But where? Even though she had seen the Wendigo for herself, she still found it difficult to think of other existences, beneath our feet, or beside us—especially if it were possible to move from one to the other, as simply as walking from one room into the next.

Shortly after eleven
A.M
. Special Agent Kellogg came by. He was wearing a brown tweed sport coat and a black rollneck sweater and, apart from a large crimson bruise on his left cheek, he looked relaxed and well, and smelled of Boss aftershave.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Good. Better. Relieved. And you?”

“Well . . . not too bad. I had to come up with some cock-and-bull story about suspecting that George Iron Walker was involved in kidnapping little William, and that they wanted to negotiate a ransom with you. The police will want to talk to you later, and children's services, but I've told them that you gave me some really heroic help, so I don't think that you'll have any serious problems.” He smiled. “And that's true. You
were
a heroine. You were amazing.”