Chapter 30

The flashes of lightning outside the cabin followed so swiftly now, one upon the other, that the pale splotches of light provided by the candles were hardly necessary. The boom of thunder was unrelenting. Outside a wet wind lashed the brush and tree branches into a fury.

In the fireplace the last of the ashes glowed dark red. Lindy sat with her back to the brick health, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them.

Alec paced back and forth across the bare wooden floor, dirt gritting under his feet with each step.

"Why doesn't the rain come?" he demanded.

"It would almost be a relief," Lindy agreed.

"This crazy weather just makes the whole thing seem worse than it is."

"Mmm." Lindy did not say so, but she wondered if Alec was aware of the depth of their trouble, weather or no weather.

"Do you think Roman made it back to town?"

"I wouldn't want to guess."

"Would he send help for us, even if he did make it?"

"What kind of help would you expect?"

"I don't know. People. Men with lights and weapons and some way to get us out of here."

"Don't hold your breath," Lindy said.

"We shouldn't have let him go. Not and take the flashlight and the ax with him."

"I didn't see you trying to stop him."

"Did you ever try to stop Roman when he wanted to do something?" Alec said.

Lindy smiled grimly in the darkness, remembering. "Plenty of times," she said.

Alec stopped his pacing for a moment and looked at her. Then he resumed. "He's not coming back for us, even if he finds his way to town. All he cares about is Roman Dixon. That's all he's ever cared about. All I can say is that he deserves anything that happens to him out there."

"Maybe we all do."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It's payback time, Alec. Don't you remember the message? I got it through my daughter. Roman heard it through his mother-in-law. It was a gypsy woman with you, wasn't it? But it wasn't really any of those people who sent the message."

"That's crazy. It doesn't mean anything to me."

"Quit it, Alec. There's no use in pretending we don't know why we're here."

He spun away from her. "Don't!"

"No, you've got to listen to this now. We have to face it. We were brought back here to Wolf River, you, me, and Roman, because of what we did to Frazier Nunley."

"But that was twenty years ago!"

"I know when it was," Lindy said quietly.

Alec turned back to face her, silhouetted against a lightning flash outside the empty window frame. "But it's not right. We didn't really do anything to him."

"For God's sake, knock it off. We tied the kid up, put him in a boat, set him adrift on the lake, and forgot about him. Maybe you didn't personally buy the rope, and maybe I didn't push him overboard, but we were all a part of it."

"It was a kid's prank, that's all. What happened wasn't our fault."

Lindy continued as though he had not spoken. "He went over the side into the lake and he drowned. He was tied up so he couldn't help himself, and he was blindfolded so he couldn't even see. Yes, it's our fault - yours and Roman's and mine, just as surely as though the three of us had held his head under the water."

For a moment Alec seemed about to say more, then he sagged and turned away. "The fire's going out," he said.

"Let it."

He ignored her. "We should keep the fire going," he said in a toneless voice. "I'll go out and see if there are any logs small enough to burn well. Roman took the ax, so I can't chop any more."

Lindy leaned forward, trying to see his face in the guttering candlelight. "We don't need a fire, Alec."

"Well, I need some air." He rolled his head and rubbed at the base of his skull. "The smoke in here or something is giving me a headache."

Lindy hugged her knees tighter and let him go.

* * *

The air outside the cabin didn't help. The wind seemed to suck away his breath, and the grinding pain in the back of his head worsened.

All his life Alec had hated the outdoors. Once or twice his father had made the gesture of taking him fishing. Both of them hated it, and both were grateful when the fishing trips ended.

That was one reason he chose to live in New York City. Even when you were outside there, you had good solid concrete under your feet, and solid, reassuring buildings on all sides of you. Central Park, with its two-legged forms of wildlife, was an example to Alec of the threatening outdoors brought to the city. He looked around now at the trees thrashing in the wild night wind and swore never again to leave Manhattan.

Resolutely he bent down to poke through the remnants of wood at the base of the pile, looking for something burnable. He really didn't care if they had a fire going or not; he just needed to get away from Lindy and her chilling accusations.

He straightened suddenly. The pressure in his head increased, and for a moment he was overcome with dizziness.

"Alec."

The voice was gentle and breathy, so much so that he thought at first it must be the wind.

"Alec."

This time he heard it clearly and looked toward the voice. Lightning blazed and revealed a pale figure standing some ten yards away from him on the weed-choked path that led to the lake.

"Come along, Alec."

The tone of the voice, the expression, the stance of the figure he had seen in the lightning - all were achingly familiar. But they couldn't be true.

His head throbbed.

"Come along, Alec. It's time."

He didn't want to, but Alec found himself taking several halting steps toward the voice.

Lightning slashed the sky again. Thunder blasted his ears. She stood a little farther on down the path to the lake now, her long white dress strangely unaffected by the violent wind. She beckoned to him, turned, and walked on down the slope toward the dark lake.

"Wait!" Alec cried into the wind. "Mother... wait!"

He followed her, stumbling along the uneven ground, while his mind shrieked at him that this could not be happening.

She turned once to look back at him. It was his mother's face, without a doubt, as she had looked twenty years ago. More beautiful, if anything. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and the white dress now seemed more like a negligee that clung sensually to her swelling breasts and gently rounded hips.

"Come, Alec," she said, and turned to continue down the path. She seemed to float, her feet never quite touching the ground. And strangely, even in the darkness between the jagged streaks of lightning, Alec could see her clearly, as though she were followed by some spectral spotlight. He watched her swaying, provocative ass, hating himself for doing it.

She came to the lip of the shore, with the vast blackness of Wolf Lake beyond her, and turned. She smiled at Alec, a smile of terrible seductiveness.

You're not my mother, he tried to say, but no sound came from his throat.

"Come to me, Alec," she said in that breathy, throaty voice that was his mother's, and yet not quite his mother's.

She opened her arms and he moved toward her, drawn by a terrible force far stronger than he was. Her arms went around him, soft and insubstantial, like arms made of gauze. She pulled him close.

Her lips pressed against his. They were warm and moist. He resisted for a moment, then gave himself to the kiss. The soft sensual mouth opened on his. His mouth answered to receive...

Worms!

Dozens... hundreds or squirming, wriggling worms spewed from the other mouth into Alec's, bulging his cheeks, sliding back down his throat.

Frantically Alec fought to pull away, but the gauzy arms held him like bands of steel. The obscene wormy kiss went on and on. The pressure increased on the spot at the base of his skull until he screamed in pain and horror. Then abruptly it stopped.

The figure of his mother shrank back away from him and collapsed into dusty nothingness as he watched. He gagged and spat, but his mouth was dry. There were no worms. No woman.

Alec tried to turn back toward the cottage, but he couldn't move. He no longer commanded his body. The other was inside his head now.

I've got you.

Alec tried to retreat to merciful darkness, but the other would not let him.

Oh, no, Alec. I want you here, sharing your body with me. I want you to know everything I am going to do to you. I want you to see it. I want you to feel it. It's payback time.

A prisoner in his own mind, Alec felt his body jerked one way and another. Before his bulging eyes his right hand was raised in front of his face. He watched in helpless revulsion as the little finger stiffened, then started to bend back toward the wrist. He screamed, silently, as the tendons strained and tore. He tried to will himself unconscious as the bone popped loose at the knuckle, but something held him awake.

One by one the other fingers bent backward to be dislocated with a nasty pop, each bringing a fresh burst of pain.

Do you think that hurts, Alec? That's nothing compared to what I still have for you. Watch. Feel.

Alec obeyed. He watched his uninjured left hand clumsily unzip his jacket, then open the buttons of the shirt underneath. The hand that he no longer controlled grasped the neck of his T-shirt, and with more strength than Alec could have summoned, ripped it open down the front, baring his narrow chest and the small pale bulge of his stomach.

Now... watch... closely.

It began just below his breastbone. A pressure. Something poking him. From inside.

He saw it then, a lump growing on the flesh at the bottom of his chest. As he watched, it protruded, as though a finger were jabbing outward from inside his body. The pain increased as the skin stretched and stretched. No pain Alec had ever experienced was quite like that when the skin finally split and a gout of blood spurted out and down the front of his pants.

Before he could fully grasp the horror of what had happened to him, something crunched inside his chest cavity. Above the burst bit of flesh, and off to one side, the jagged pink end of a rib stabbed outward through the skin.

Alec's mind, clamped in a state of agonized helplessness, recoiled but could not retreat from the reality that he was being killed, bit by bit, from the inside.

Then the thing that was in him started to work on an eyeball.

Lightning ripped across the tops of the trees, revealing for a moment the black boiling lake. Thunder exploded.

And at last the rain came.