Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

He waited, hearing nothing but the whisper of leaves, the rising wind. After a minute or so, he turned and continued walking quickly.

Immediately he could hear footsteps to his right again.

He stopped. “Who is it?”

The wind blew, the cottonwoods creaked.

“Pendergast?”

He resumed walking, and almost immediately he could hear, he could feel, that he was being paced. A chill hit him.

“Whoever it is, I know you’re there!” he said, walking faster. He tried to sound loud, angry, but he was unable to keep the quaver from his voice. His heart was pounding in his chest.

The unknown thing kept pace.

Unbidden, the words old Whit had quoted in church that Sunday came back to Ludwig, here in the darkness: . . . the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking who he may devour . . .

He felt breath come snorting through his nose, and he fought hard against a rising panic. Soon, he told himself, he’d be out of the trees, back between two walls of corn. From there it was only two hundred yards to the road, and only another two hundred to the car. The road, at least, would be safe.

But, oh God, those horrible, plodding, crunching footfalls . . . !

“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled over his shoulder.

He hadn’t meant to yell: it had burst out from some instinctual place within him. Just as instinctual was the dead run that he now broke into. He was too old to run, especially all-out, and his heart felt like it would break loose in his chest. But even if he’d tried he could not have stopped his feet.

In the darkness beside him, the thing kept pace. Now Ludwig could hear the breathing—short rhythmic grunts in time to each thudding footfall.

I could run into the corn, lose him, Ludwig thought as he dashed out of the trees. Before him, the dark sea of corn was being tossed by the wind, roaring and rattling. Dust stung his eyes. There was a brief flash of lightning.

Muh! The sudden bark, alarmingly near, sent terror breaking in waves over him: it seemed human, and yet at the same time so very inhuman.

“Get away from me!” he screamed, running even faster now, faster than he dreamed possible.

Muh, muh, muh, the thing grunted as it ran alongside.

Another flicker of lightning, and in the pale flash he could see the shape pacing him through the corn. He saw it very briefly, but with brutal distinctness. For a moment, he almost stumbled in shock. It was mind-warping, impossible. Oh, dear Jesus, that face, that face—!!

Ludwig ran. And as he ran, he heard the figure keeping pace effortlessly.

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

The road! The flash of headlights, a car just passing—!

Ludwig rushed out into the road with a banshee wail of terror, screaming and running down the center line, waving his arms at the receding taillights. His cries were swallowed by another rumble of thunder. He stopped, sagging forward, palms on his knees, feeling as if his lungs would rupture. Completely spent now, he waited, limp and defeated, for the sudden blow, the white-hot lance of pain . . .

But there was nothing, and after a moment he straightened up and looked around.

The wind tossed and agitated the corn on both sides of the road, drowning all sound, but in the dimmest light Ludwig could see the monster was gone. Gone. Frightened away by the car, perhaps. He looked about more wildly now, heaving, coughing, and trying to suck in air, dazed by his own good fortune.

And his own car was only two hundred yards down the road.

Half stumbling, half running, Smit Ludwig went wheezing, gasping down the middle of the road. His heart hammered with a wild abandon. Just one hundred yards now. Fifty. Ten.

With a final gasp he staggered into the turnaround where he had hidden the car. With a surge of relief so strong it threatened to buckle his knees, he could see the faint gleam of its metal side, within a ragged patch of volunteer corn. He was safe, thank the risen Lord, he was safe! With a sob and a gasp he seized the door handle, pulled open the door.

From the dark semicircle of surrounding corn, the thing launched itself out at him with a rising bellow.

MuuuuuuuUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Ludwig’s gargling scream was swallowed by the shrieking of the wind.

Forty

F rom his suite of rooms on the second floor of the old Kraus place, Pendergast watched a dirty red dawn break along the eastern horizon. Distant lightning had flickered and rumbled all night. And the wind was still rising, rippling the fields of corn, causing the “Kraus’s Kaverns” sign to swivel and shiver on its weatherbeaten post. The trees along the creek, half a mile away, were tossing in the gusts, and dusty sheets rose from the dry fields, carried aloft in rolling folds before disappearing into the dirty sky.

He lowered his eyes from the window. For the hundredth time he went over the memory crossing in his mind, re-creating the preparation, the setting of the scene, the mental deconstruction and reconstruction of the Mounds region, the past events that had followed. It was the first time a memory crossing had failed him. Having had no luck in his investigation into present-day Medicine Creek, he had made the crossing in an attempt to understand the events of the past: to solve the riddle of the curse of the Forty-Fives, to understand what really happened on that day in 1865. But it was as the legends held: the Indians really had appeared out of nowhere, and then vanished back into nowhere.

Yet that was impossible. Unless it was at last time to contemplate a possibility he had always resisted: that there were, in fact, extra-natural forces at work here, forces that he neither apprehended nor comprehended.

It was a most frustrating turn of events indeed.

There was a faint droning sound to the southeast. Raising his head, Pendergast saw the dot of a plane coming in high over the corn. It grew in size, flying across his field of vision, resolving into a Cessna crop duster. As it receded again toward the opposite horizon, it banked and came back—the spotter plane, still looking for Chauncy’s body.

A second drone came from out of the lightening horizon, and Pendergast saw a second plane arrive to work the cornfields, flying back and forth at the other end of the landscape.

From downstairs came the rattle of a kettle being placed on the stove. Moments later, the aroma of percolating coffee reached him. Winifred Kraus would also be making his tea, in the exacting manner he had taught her. It wasn’t easy to make a satisfactory cup of King’s Mountain Oolong, getting the temperature of both the water and the pot precisely right, knowing the correct quantity of leaves to add, the right amount of time to let them steep. Most important was the quality of the water. He had quoted to her at length from the fifth chapter of Lu Yu’s Ch’a Ching, the holy scripture of tea, in which the poet debated the relative merits of mountain water, river water, and spring water, as well as the various stages of boiling, and Winifred had seemed to listen with interest. And, to his surprise, the tapwater of Medicine Creek had proven fresh, cool, pure, and quite delicious, with a perfect balance of minerals and ions. It made an almost perfect cup of tea.

Pendergast thought about this while watching the two planes move back and forth, back and forth. And then, rather suddenly, one began to circle.

Just like the vultures had done, not so many days before.

Still thoughtful, Pendergast slipped his cell phone out of his coat pocket and dialed. A voice answered, thick with sleep.

“Miss Swanson? I will expect you here in ten minutes, if you please. It would appear we’ve found the body of Dr. Chauncy.” He snapped the phone shut and turned from the window.