Prophecy (29 page)

The cabin was a hundred yards ahead, its shape silhouetted in the moonlight as the foursome ran desperately toward it, spurred on by the sound of galloping feet splashing through the water behind them. None dared to look back, for they could hear that the beast was gaining.

Rob glanced at Maggie and saw her terrified eyes, blood glistening on her neck, as she straggled farther and farther behind. The beast was running almost parallel to her, crashing through the shallows of the lake shore in an ungainly gait but outdistancing them with every stride. It was pulling ahead now, as though trying to beat them to the cabin.

“She’s going to come back on us!” Hawks shouted.

They were almost at the cabin, but the beast was fifty feet beyond them, its head swiveling back as it prepared to turn. In a smash of splintering wood, it collided with the dock, the water erupting around it as it wailed in confusion, and spun.

It gave them the moment they needed to reach the cabin. Hawks hurtled the porch railing and smashed through the door, the others racing in behind him.

“Barricade!” Hawks shouted.

“I can’t see!” Romona cried.

Rob dashed to where the table was, fumbling to find the kerosene lantern in the darkness.

“It’s coming!” Maggie gasped as she stood at the window.

The beast charged with full fury; the entire cabin shuddered as it made contact.

“Board the window!” Hawks yelled.

Rob managed to light the lantern and run to the cupboards where he’d seen a hammer and nails; Hawks grabbed the kitchen table and furiously assailed it, smashing its legs off and plastering it up against the window. Rob raced toward him, but the cabin was hit again; stones clattered down from the

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fireplace as a howl of anger resounded from outside,

“Boards!” Hawks shouted.

“The bed!” Rob yelled to Maggie.

“The bed?”

“Bedboards!” Rob shouted; then he whirled toward the window and began pounding nails.

Maggie raced up to the loft, desperately throwing the mattress off the bed, and raked up the bedboards into her arms; but the ceiling just above her head began to groan and bend, bowing inward beneath a sudden weight.

“Rob!” she cried.

Rob ran upward as a huge talon curled in between the rafters, ripping one out, exposing the sky.

“The gun!” Rob shouted.

But it was too late. Another rafter ripped away and the beast’s massive paw lunged inward. Maggie shrieked and fell to the floor; Rob grabbed a kerosene lantern and hurled it upward.

“No!” Hawks yelled. “Don’t light it!!”

The lantern smashed against the ceiling and Hawks charged up the stairs with an ax in his hand. The beast’s paw surged downward and Hawks swung hard, a geyser of blood shooting up from where the ax buried deep into the fur. The paw suddenly withdrew, and the cabin vibrated with a thunderous howl of rage. Then everything went quiet.

Rob grabbed Maggie, half pulling her down the stairs; Hawks remained in the loft, ax poised, waiting for more. But all he could see through the opened rafters was moonlight.

Romona had dismantled a ventilation pipe from the stove and peered out through the small hole where it had been connected to the wall. “I can see it,” she said. “It’s going away!”

Through the narrow opening she saw the hulking figure of the beast moving slowly, limping as it lumbered toward the tree line. When it reached the trees it turned. Then it coiled back and suddenly charged, speeding forward with full momentum.

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“No!” Romona cried.

The cabin was hit with the impact of an earthquake. Romona was knocked clear across the room as dirt spewed from between the logs of the cabin wall, and the entire fireplace collapsed in a clattering cascade of boulders. The foundations beneath the cabin groaned, and they all began to slip.

“We’re tipping!” Maggie screamed.

Rafters above their heads bent and snapped beneath the strain; chairs and tables slid across the floor. With a sudden jolt, one end of the cabin hit the ground, the entire structure tilting at a precarious angle.

“It won’t hold!” Hawks shouted from the loft. “It’s going to get in!”

Rob, Maggie, and Romona stood with their backs against the downhill wall; Hawks leaped from the loft and grabbed his archer’s bow from the debris. The broken string trailed behind him as he made his way up the inclined floor to where Maggie’s cello lay; when he reached it, he raised it overhead and smashed it to pieces, ripping out the strings.

A roar came from outside, barreling down on them like a freight train; the cabin half spun with the impact, the entire front wall splintering as rafters clattered down around them.

“Your gun!” Hawks shouted. “It’s coming in!”

Jolted into action, Rob scrambled for the rifle. Hawks braced the archer’s bow between his feet, working with his teeth and hands, fumbling with knots that slipped through his fingers as he desperately attempted to mend its broken string. He groaned with frustration, for it was plain that the beast was within minutes of finishing them. Its massive paw burst through the broken front wall and upward through the roof, slicing a path that revealed its murderous eyes glaring down at them. The air reverberated with its earsplitting cry.

Romona pulled Maggie close to her, and Rob raised his rifle; at that moment Hawks’s knot connected, his

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hands pulling it tight with such force that he fell backward onto the floor.

With a single blow, half the roof gave way, reveal-inf the full form of the beast towering over them, its teeth dripping saliva as it wailed in triumph, extending its arms to reveal the pink skin folds that stretched beneath.

“Shoot!” Hawks cried. And Rob fired. The beast’s jaw became unhinged in an explosion of bloody pulp, and it reeled backwards. Rob quickly cocked the rifle and aimed again. Hawks had regained his footing and drew back an arrow, his arm trembling with strain. The beast lunged forward.

“Again!” Hawks cried. He and Rob fired simultaneously. A hole tore into the beast’s chest and an arrow embedded into the side of its neck. It staggered, then rose to its full height, its neck expanding in a sudden swell.

“Again!” Hawks cried as he drew back another arrow.

“It’s empty!” Rob yelled.

With a gurgle that sounded like an oncoming flood, the beast’s broken mouth flew open and its stomach contents sprayed out, hitting all beneath it with the milky debris.

Hawks let his second arrow fly and it streaked into the beast’s snout, the huge animal screeching with pain as its arms flailed furiously against the cabin, dislodging heavy timbers that began to crash down around them.

“Run!” Hawks shouted. But there was nowhere to run. The cabin was collapsing, beams raining down with such force that they broke through the floor.

Hawks stood apart from the rest, with his last arrow poised, waiting for the precise moment to let it fly. But before he got the chance, the beast’s paw swooped in and caught him, smashing him into a wall.

“No!” Romona screamed.

Rob scrambled toward him, but the sharp talons got there first, impaling Hawks and scooping him up,

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squashing his body against what was left of the ceiling. It stuck there for a moment, then crashed down beside Rob, the bow and arrow still gripped in Hawks’s mangled hand. Rob grabbed for the weapon, dislodging the arrow, but the beast’s paw swiped inward again.

“Rob!” Maggie screamed.

He turned and tried to run, but the talons caught him, snatching him into the air.

“No!” Maggie shrieked in a bloodcurdling cry. But she was helpless to do anything but watch. The beast had pulled Rob to its mouth and was attempting to eat him.

“God! God! God!” Maggie wailed. Then she saw Rob’s arm jerk backward, the arrow still clutched in his hand. With full force he plunged it deep into the beast’s eye, jamming it down until it hit something solid.

For a split moment, everything stopped. The beast stood paralyzed, and a fine jet stream of blood shot from its shattered eye. It dropped Rob to the ground and squealed with pain. Then it spun and staggered, clawing at its eye.

Rob lay outside the cabin in shock, the beast whirling and dancing above him, squeaking in agony, stumbling, lurching, trying to maintain its balance. It swayed against the cabin, collapsing the front wall. Rob heard the women cry out. Then their voices fell silent.

The beast’s arms lowered and its posture sagged. The one remaining eye turned to Rob. Then it dropped to its knees. Its full, maternal breasts scraped the ground as it crawled toward the lake and collapsed in the water.

Its limp body drifted gently outward until a stream of bubbles broke the surface around its submerged head.

Then it sank, disappearing from view.

The lake returned to calm and the night returned

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to quiet. The sky was beginning to faintly lighten; the forest echoed with the call of the loon.

The cabin behind Rob was reduced to rubble; he began to hear the sound of movement within. Summoning all of his strength, he managed to roll over and saw Romona crawling out from beneath the debris. Her face was bloodied and her eyes were empty.

“Your wife is in there,” she whispered in a deadened tone. “It fell on her.”

With the morning sun, a flight of Canadian geese over Mary’s Lake broke formation, frightened by the sound of approaching helicopters. The search that began twenty-four hours before, when the sheriff was reported missing, had been interrupted by darkness when the trail of the survivors ended at the lake.

To the men in the helicopters, the sight of the island did little to explain the mysterious trail of destruction. There was just a pile of timber where a cabin had once stood-and two lone figures standing on the shore.

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13

The call that Victor Shussette received from Robert Vern had rilled him with alarm. Little of what Rob said made sense to him, but it was plain by Rob’s tone of voice that it was all true.

Shussette had immediately left Washington and flown to Portland, Maine, then hailed a taxi to take him to the hospital where Rob was waiting for him. He had not told Rob of the recent developments in the controversy between lumber companies and the American Indians; he would withhold the information until Rob was better able to stomach it. A judgment had been rendered in the Midwest invalidating the Indians’ claim as rightful heirs to the land they were born on; it set a legal precedent that would likely be followed in Maine. Although the Pitney Paper Mill would be fined and forced to shut down their pulping operation until they could prove that they could meet all health and safety standards, they would eventually reopen, and claim Manatee Forest as their own.

As Shussette sat now in the taxi on his way to the hospital, he looked somberly out at the rain. He wondered how many people, other than environmentalists, suspected or cared that these were the same raindrops that had been falling to the earth since the time of the planet’s creation. They would be absorbed into the soft ground and eventually vaporized, rising once again into the sky, where they would ionize with the atmosphere, form clouds, and descend once again

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into the thirsty earth. From the taxi window he watched the rain collecting into pools on the hard pavement and running off into sewers at the gutter.

The sky was beginning to darken. Shussette checked his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. Maggie had been scheduled for surgery at six.

Maggie Vern felt the first stirrings of consciousness well after midnight. As she gradually became aware of who and where she was, her mind grasped at fleeting images that represented the passage of time between the beast’s attack and now. They drifted in fragments, blending and repeating, as if they existed only in a dream. She saw the cabin tumbling, then helicopters descending over the lake. She recalled Rob’s face bending close to her, shouting at her to stay alive. Then there were other faces, partially masked, a light as bright as the sun shining from behind them.

Without opening her eyes she put her hands on her neck and moved them down the length of her body to make sure it was all there. Her torso was tightly taped and she was unable to move. Struggling to raise her eyelids, she saw tubes snaking down from both sides of the bed; at the foot of the bed there were metal weights suspended on strings. The tape meant that she had been operated on; the weights meant that she was in traction.

As her senses continued to sharpen, she became aware of something else. Not from anything she saw or felt, but from what her intuition told her. Her womb was empty. Her pregnancy was gone.

She closed her eyes and floated in darkness, gradually realizing that there was someone in the room. Footsteps had entered and were slowly approaching the bed. They were light and soft, the footsteps of a woman.

“Will she be all right?” a voice whispered.

“I think so.”

Rob sat in a darkened corner of the hospital room.

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Romona stood beside the bed. Their voices were weak, numbed with exhaustion.

“How about you7” Rob asked.

“I’m going back now. There’s some difficulty there.” She hesitated, reluctant to burden him any further. “The police are insisting on examining the body. It’s against Indian law. It means we can’t bury John in the way he would have wanted.” Her voice trembled and she paused, waiting for control. “He couldn’t live the way he wanted. He’ll have no peace in death either.”

“There’ll be no autopsy.”

Romona nodded, unable to summon any more words. Rob rose and came to her; both knew there was nothing left to say. Rob held out his hand and she took it in both of hers. Then Rob hugged her. Their eyes did not meet again as she turned and quietly left the room.

Rob looked at Maggie and slowly moved to the bed, sitting on the edge of it, gazing down at her slumbering face. It was pale and badly bruised; a well-intentioned nurse had tied a blue ribbon in her hair. Rob reached up and gently removed it, and her hair wafted back against the pillow. Then he bent forward and lowered his head.