Mark Guthrie stood there, trembling with rage, fists balled at his sides, glaring at her, his mouth drawn into tight lines that showed a double row of clenched teeth. “Don’t you
Val’s hard left hand slapped the rest of the words into silence. It was a hard blow and so fast he never saw it, and it spun him halfway around. For a moment he stood there, eyes wide with shock, a hand pressed to his cheek, head ringing from the blow. He straightened and both of his hands became fists.
“What are you going to do, Mark?” Val asked harshly. “Are you going to hit me back?”
“If you ever do that again,” he said in a fierce whisper, “I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Val snapped. “Will you do to me what you were threatening to do to Connie if she didn’t stop crying? Is that your only answer? To hurt women instead of being a real man and trying to help?”
He raised one fist, wanting with every fiber of his being to smash her into silence, to shut her mouth, to stop the flow of words. Val stood there and looked at him, ignoring the heavy fist poised above her, just looking at him.
She said, “If it will make you feel like a man, Mark, go on and hit me. You’re bigger than me. Go ahead and do it. Be a man.”
The fist trembled, shaking visibly as every muscle in his body strove one against another, warring with rage and confusion and a mindless compulsion to smash. Then, with a growl of inarticulate rage, he spun away and slammed out of the room. Val heard him stomp down the stairs, heard the sound of the hallway closet door opening and then banging shut, heard the front door slam open, then heard only the silence of the house and the soft sounds of Connie’s sobs.
“Shit,” Val said softly to herself as she sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked Connie’s hair, listening to her tears. After a while, she, too, wept.
(5)
The storm clouds encircling the sun closed ranks and blotted out the sky. They were thick clouds, swollen with cold rain and drooping low over the town. In just minutes day turned to an early twilight so thick that streetlamp sensors triggered and the sodium vapor lights flickered on. Drivers turned on their headlights. None of this stopped the celebrations. Little Halloween rolled through the town thicker and heavier than the clouds overhead.
Deep in the cellar of the house, down in the darkness below old floorboards, the white things in their nest
Chapter 25
(1)
As the sky darkened overhead with the coming storm Crow continued to hack his way through the dense vine-choked brush. Then he broke through a wall of stinking vines and beyond it the path abruptly widened and the way ahead was unobstructed. They walked around the bushes rather than battling them. The ground, though, was marshy, soft, and unpleasantly spongy under their feet, sometime yielding inches under their weight, sometimes unexpectedly firm, but always requiring care. Crow was troubled about Newton, who was clearly not a woodsman. The thought of having to carry a broken-legged Newton up the hill was un-appealing.
“Move slow,” he said, “this muck’ll pull your boot right off.”
Newton stopped and pointed. “What’s that? Is that a wall?”
Crow stopped and looked where Newton was pointing. Their marshy path broadened even further and then spilled out into a field. On the near side of the field, crowded back against the forest wall, was a flat mass of gray-white. “Sure as hell is,” he said, his throat going dry.
They moved through the forest with great caution, watching as the gray flatness took shape, became defined, resolved into walls and bricks and window frames. After a few dozen paces it was clear to them that they were approaching the place from the side, through a wall of trees that probably once stood as a backpiece to the house, in woods that would have remained untouched even as the forward acres were converted into farmlands and fields.
