Strange Highways (27 page)

Strange.

Sitting on the rock between the pine trees, in the body of Teel Pleever, Seed took an additional eighteen minutes to acquire a full understanding of the depth, breadth, and workings of the human mind. It was one of the most interesting minds that Seed had encountered anywhere in the universe: complex, powerful—distinctly psychotic.

This was going to be an interesting incarnation.

Seed rose from the rock, picked up the rifle that belonged to its host, and headed down the forested hills toward the place where Teel Pleever had parked the jeep wagon. Seed had no interest in deer poaching.

5

JACK CASWELL SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, WATCHING HIS WIFE AS SHE got ready for school that Monday morning, and he knew beyond a doubt that he was the luckiest man in the world. Laura was so lovely, slender, long limbed, and shapely that Jack sometimes felt as if he were dreaming his life rather than actually living it, for surely in the real world he would not have merited a woman like Laura.

She took her brown-plaid scarf from one of the hooks by the back door and wrapped it around her neck, crossing the fringed ends over her breasts. Peering through the half-steamed window in the door, she read the outside temperature on the big thermometer mounted on the porch. “Thirty-eight degrees, and it’s only the end of October.”

Her thick, soft, shiny, chestnut-brown hair framed a perfectly proportioned face reminiscent of the old movie star Veronica Lake. She had enormous, expressive eyes so dark brown that they were almost black; they were the clearest, most direct eyes that Jack had ever seen. He doubted that anyone could look into those eyes and lie—or fail to love the woman behind them.

Removing her old brown cloth coat from another hook, slipping into it, closing the buttons, she said, “We’ll have snow well before Thanksgiving this year, I’ll bet, and the whitest Christmas in ages, and we’ll be snowbound by January.”

“Wouldn’t mind being snowbound with you for maybe six or eight months,” he said. “Just the two of us, snow up to the roof, so we’d have to stay in bed, under the covers, sharing body heat to survive.”

Grinning, she came to him, bent, and kissed him on the cheek. “Jackson,” she said, using her pet name for him, “the way you turn me on, we’d generate so darn much body heat that it wouldn’t matter if the snow was a
mile
higher than the roof. Regardless of how cold it was outside, it’d be sweltering in here, temperature and humidity over a hundred degrees, jungle plants growing out of the floorboards, vines crawling up the walls, tropical molds in all the corners.”

She went into the living room to get the briefcase that was on the desk at which she planned her school lessons.

Jack got up from the table. A little stiffer than usual this morning but still in good enough shape to shuffle around without his cane, he gathered up the dirty breakfast dishes. He was still thinking about what a lucky man he was.

She could have had any guy she wanted, yet she had chosen a husband with no better than average looks and with two bum legs that wouldn’t hold him up if he didn’t clamp them in metal braces every morning. With her looks, personality, and intelligence, she could have married rich or could have gone off to the big city to make her own fortune. Instead she had settled for the simple life of a teacher and the wife of a struggling writer, passing up mansions for this small house at the edge of the woods, forgoing limousines for a three-year-old Toyota.

When she bustled into the kitchen with her briefcase, Jack was putting the dishes in the sink. “Do you miss the limousines?”

She blinked at him. “What’re you talking about?”

He sighed and leaned against the counter. “Sometimes I worry that maybe …”

She came to him. “That maybe what?”

“Well, that you don’t have much in life, certainly not as much as you ought to have. Laura, you were born for limousines, mansions, ski chalets in Switzerland. You
deserve
them.”

She smiled. “You sweet, silly man. I’d be bored in a limousine. I like to drive. It’s
fun
to drive. Heck, if I lived in a mansion, I’d rattle around like a pea in a barrel. I like
cozy
places. Since I don’t ski, chalets aren’t any use to me. And though I like their clocks and chocolates, I can’t abide the way the Swiss yodel all the time.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you really happy?”

She looked directly into his eyes. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“I worry that I can’t give you enough.”

“Listen, Jackson, you love me with all your heart, and I know you do. I
feel
it all the time, and it’s a love that most women will never experience. I’m happier with you than I ever thought I could be. And I enjoy my work too. Teaching is immensely satisfying if you really try to jam knowledge into those little demons. Besides, you’ll be famous someday, the most famous writer of detective novels since Raymond Chandler. I just know it. Now, if you don’t stop being a total booby, I’m going to be late for work.”

She kissed him again, went to the door, blew him another kiss, went outside, and descended the porch steps to the Toyota parked in the gravel driveway.

He grabbed his cane from the back of one of the kitchen chairs and used it to move more quickly to the door than he could have with only the assistance of his leg braces. Wiping the steam from the cold pane of glass, he watched her start the car and race the engine until, warmed up, it stopped knocking. Clouds of vapor plumed from the exhaust pipe. She drove out to the county road and off toward the elementary school three miles away. Jack stayed at the window until the white Toyota had dwindled to a speck and vanished.

Though Laura was the strongest and most self-assured person Jack had ever known, he worried about her. The world was hard, full of nasty surprises, even here in the rural peace of Pine County. And people, including the toughest of them, could get ground up suddenly by the wheels of fate, crushed and broken in the blink of an eye.

“You take care of yourself,” he said softly. “You take care and come back to me.”

6

SEED DROVE TEEL PLEEVER’S BATTERED OLD JEEP WAGON TO THE END OF the abandoned logging road and turned right onto a narrow blacktop lane. In a mile the hills descended into flatter land, and the forest gave way to open fields.

At the first dwelling, Seed stopped and got out of the jeep. Drawing upon its host’s store of knowledge, Seed discovered this was “the Halliwell place.” At the front door, it knocked sharply.

Mrs. Halliwell, a thirtyish woman with amiable features, answered the knock. She was drying her hands on her blue-and-white-checkered apron. “Why, Mr. Pleever, isn’t it?”

Seed extruded tendrils from its host’s fingertips. The swift, black lashes whipped around the woman, pinning her. As Mrs. Halliwell screamed, a much thicker stalk burst from Pleever’s open mouth, shot straight to the woman, and bloodlessly pierced her chest, fusing with her flesh as it entered her.

She never finished her first scream.

Seed took control of her in seconds. The tendrils and stalks linking the two hosts parted in the middle, and the glistening, blue-spotted black alien substance flowed partly back into Teel Pleever and partly into Jane Halliwell.

Seed was growing.

Searching Jane Halliwell’s mind, Seed learned that her two young children had gone to school and that her husband had taken the pickup into Pineridge to make a few purchases at the hardware store. She had been alone in the house.

Eager to acquire new hosts and expand its empire, Seed took Jane and Teel out to the jeep wagon and drove back onto the narrow lane, heading toward the county road that led into Pineridge.

7

MRS. CASWELL ALWAYS BEGAN THE MORNING WITH A HISTORY LESSON. Until he had landed in her sixth-grade class, Jamie Watley had thought that he didn’t like history, that it was dull. When Mrs. Caswell taught history, however, it wasn’t only interesting but fun.

Sometimes she made them act out roles in great historical events, and each of them got to wear a funny hat suitable to the character he was portraying. Mrs. Caswell had the most amazing collection of funny hats. Once, when teaching a lesson about the Vikings, she had walked into the room wearing a horned helmet, and everyone had busted a gut laughing. At first Jamie had been a bit embarrassed for her; she was
his
Mrs. Caswell, after all, the woman he loved, and he couldn’t bear to see her behaving foolishly. But then she showed them paintings of Viking longboats with intricately carved dragons on the prows, and she began to describe what it was like to be a Viking sailing unknown misty seas in the ancient days before there were maps, heading out into unknown waters where—as far as people of that time knew you might actually meet up with dragons or even fall off the edge of the earth, and as she talked her voice grew softer, softer, until everyone was leaning forward, until it seemed as if they were transported from their classroom onto the deck of a small ship, with storm waves crashing all around them and a mysterious dark shore looming out of the wind and rain ahead. Now Jamie had ten drawings of Mrs. Caswell as a Viking, and they were among his favorites in his secret gallery.

Last week a teaching evaluator name Mr. Enright had monitored a day of Mrs. Caswell’s classes. He was a neat little man in a dark suit, white shirt, and red bow tie. After the history lesson, which had been about life in medieval times, Mr. Enright wanted to question the kids to see how much they grasped of what they had been taught. Jamie and the others were eager to answer, and Enright was impressed. “But, Mrs. Caswell,” he said, “you’re not exactly teaching them the six-grade level, are you? This seems more like about eighth-grade material to me.”

Ordinarily, the class would have reacted positively to Enright’s statement, seizing on the implied compliment. They would have sat` up straight at their desks, puffed our their chests, and smiled smugly. = But they had been coached to react differently if this situation arose, so they slumped in their chairs and tried to look exhausted.

Mrs. Caswell said, “Class, what Mr. Enright means is that he’s afraid I’m pushing you too fast, too hard. You don’t think that I demand too much of you?”

The entire class answered with one voice:
“Yes!”

Mrs. Caswell pretended to look startled. “Oh, now, I don’t overwork you.”

Melissa Fedder, who had the enviable ability to cry on cue, burst into tears, as if the strain of being one of Mrs. Caswell’s students were just too much to bear.

Jamie stood, shaking in make-believe terror, and delivered his one speech with practiced emotion: “Mr. En-Enright, we can’t t-t-take it any more. She never lets up on us. N-n-never. We c-c-call her Miss Attila the Hun.”

Other kids began to voice rehearsed complaints to Mr. Enright:

“—never gives us a recess-“

“—four hours of homework every night-“

“—too much-“

“—only sixth-graders-“

Mr. Enright was genuinely appalled.

Mrs. Caswell stepped toward the class, scowling, and made a short chopping motion with her hand.

Everyone instantly fell silent, as if afraid of her. Melissa Fedder was still crying, and Jamie worked hard at making his lower lip tremble.

“Mrs. Caswell,” Mr. Enright said uneasily, “uh, well, perhaps you should consider sticking closer to the sixth-grade texts. The stress created by-“

“Oh!” Mrs. Caswell said, feigning horror. “I’m afraid it’s too late, Mr. Enright. Look at the poor dears! I’m afraid I’ve worked them to death.”

At this cue, all the kids in the class fell forward on their desks, as if they had collapsed and died.

Mr. Enright stood in startled silence for a moment, then broke into laughter, and all the kids laughed too, and Mr. Enright said, “Mrs. Caswell, you set me up! This was
staged.”

“I confess,” she said, and the kids laughed harder.

“But how did you know I’d be concerned about your pushing them past sixth-grade material?”

“Because everyone
always
underestimates kids,” Mrs. Caswell said. “The approved curriculum never challenges them. Everyone worries so much about psychological stress, the problems associated with being an overachiever, and the result is that kids are actually encouraged to be
under
achievers. But I know kids, Mr. Enright, and I tell you they’re a much tougher, smarter bunch than anyone gives them credit for being. Am I right?”

The class loudly assured her that she was right.

Mr. Enright surveyed the class, pausing to study each child’s face, and it was the first time all morning that he had really
looked
at them. At last he smiled. “Mrs. Caswell, this is a wonderful thing you’ve got going here.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Caswell.

Mr. Enright shook his head, smiled more broadly, and winked. “Miss Attila the Hun indeed.”

At that moment Jamie was so proud of Mrs. Caswell and so in love with her that he had to struggle valiantly to repress tears far more genuine than those of Melissa Fedder.

Now, on the last Monday morning in October, Jamie listened to Miss Attila the Hun as she told them what medical science was like in the Middle Ages (crude) and what alchemy was (lead into gold and all sorts of crazy-fascinating stuff), and in a while he could no longer smell the chalk dust and child scents of the classroom but could
almost
smell the terrible, reeking, sewage-spattered streets of medieval Europe.

8

IN HIS TEN-FOOT-SQUARE OFFICE AT THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE, JACK Caswell sat at an ancient pine desk, sipping coffee and rereading the chapter he’d written the previous day. He made a lot of pencil corrections and then switched on his computer to enter the changes.

In the three years since his accident, unable to return to work as a game warden for the department of forestry, he had struggled to fulfill his lifelong desire to be a writer. (Sometimes, in his dreams, he could still see the big truck starting to slide on the ice-covered road, and he felt his own car entering a sickening spin too, and the bright headlights were bearing down on him, and he pumped the brake pedal, turned the wheel into the slide, but he was always too late. Even in the dreams, he was always too late.) He had written four fast-paced detective novels in the last three years, two of which had sold to New York publishers, and he had also placed eight short stories in magazines.