Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

He paused.

“She died twenty years ago.”

He let that sink in, then continued. “And this man McFelty’s been in trouble with the law before. Small stuff, mostly, but a lot of it violent: petty assault, aggravated assault, drunk driving.”

The revelations had been coming fast, one almost piling up upon the other. And now Hazen added the kicker: “McFelty disappeared two days before the Swegg killing. I think he went underground. As Hank just pointed out, you can’t come and go from Medicine Creek without being noticed: without neighbors noticing, without me noticing. He’s been holed up in Kraus’s Kaverns all this time, coming out at night to do his dirty work.”

There was a long pause in which nobody spoke. Then Fisk cleared his throat. “This is first-rate work, Sheriff. What’s the next move?”

Hazen stood up, his face set. “The town’s been crawling with law officers and press. You can be sure McFelty’s still laying low in those caves, waiting for a lull so’s he can escape. Now that he’s completed his job.”

“And?”

“And so we go in there and get the son of a bitch.”

“When?”

“Now.” He turned to Larssen. “Conference us into state police HQ in Dodge. I want Commander Ernie Wayes on the horn himself. We need a well-armed team and we need it now. We need dogs, good dogs this time. I’ll head over to the courthouse, get a bench warrant from Judge Anderson.”

“Are you sure McFelty’s still there, in the caves?” Fisk asked.

“No,” said Hazen. “I’m not sure. But there’s going to be physical evidence in there at the very least. I’m not taking any chances. This guy’s dangerous. He may be doing a job for Lavender, but he’s been enjoying himself just a little too much—and that scares the piss out of me. Let’s not make the mistake of underestimating him.”

He looked out the window at the blackening horizon, the rising wind.

“We’ve got to move. Our man may use the cover of the storm to make his exit.” He glanced at his watch, then looked once again around the room.

“We’re going in tonight at ten, and we’re going in big.”

Forty-Eight

T he darkness was total, absolute. Corrie lay on the wet rock, soaked to the bone, her whole body shivering from terror and cold. Not far away, she could hear it moving around, talking to itself in a singsong undertone, making horrible little bubbling sounds with its lips, sometimes cooing, sometimes laughing softly as if at some private joke.

Her mind had passed through disbelief and stark terror, and come out on the other side cold and numb. The killer had her. It —she supposed it was a he —had tied her up and thrown her over his shoulder, roughly, like a sack of meat, and carried her through a labyrinth of passageways, sometimes climbing, sometimes descending, sometimes splashing across underground streams, for what seemed like an eternity.

And through darkness—always, through darkness. He seemed to move by feel or by memory.

His arms had felt slippery and clammy, yet strong as steel cables that threatened always to crush her. She had screamed, begged, pleaded, but her protests had met with obliviousness. And then, at last, they got to this place —this place with its unutterable stink—and he had dropped her sprawling onto the stone floor. Then the horny foot had kicked her roughly into a corner, where she now lay, dazed, aching, bleeding. The stench—the stench that before had been faint and unidentifiable—was here appalling, omnipresent, enveloping.

She had lain, numb and unthinking, for an unguessable period of time. But now her senses were beginning to return. The initial paralysis of terror was wearing off, if only slightly. She lay still, forcing herself to think. She was far back in the cave—a cave much bigger than anyone imagined. Nobody was going to find their way back here to save her. . .

She struggled with the panic that rose at this thought. If nobody was going to save her, then she’d have to save herself.

She shut her eyes tight against the darkness, listening. He was busying himself in the blackness somewhere nearby, gargling and singsonging unintelligibly to himself.

Was he even human . . . ?

He had to be human. He had a human foot—though as callused as a piece of rawhide. And he spoke, or at least vocalized, in a high, babylike voice.

And yet, if he was human, he was like none other that had ever walked the earth.

Suddenly she felt him near. There was a grunt. She froze in fear, waiting. A hand seized her roughly, dragged her to her feet, shook her.

“Muh?”

She sobbed. “Leave me alone.”

Another shake, more violent this time. “Hoooo!” went the voice, high and babyish. She tried to wrench free, and with a grunt he flung her down.

“Stop . . . stop . . .”

A hand seized her ankle and gave a sharp jerk. Corrie screamed, feeling pain lance through her hip. And then she felt his arms around her, grabbing her by the shoulders, lifting her bodily. “Please, please stop—”

“Plisss,” squeaked the voice. “Plisss. Hruhn.”

She feebly tried to push him away, but he was holding her close to him, his foul breath washing over her.

“No—let me go—”

“Heeee!”

She was flung down again, and then she heard him shuffle off with a low, murmuring sound. She struggled wildly, tried to sit up. The ropes burned her wrists and she felt her hands tingling from lack of blood. He was going to kill her, she knew that. She had to get away.

With a great effort, she managed to flop herself upward into a sitting position. If only she knew who he was, or what he was doing, or why he was there in the cave . . . If only she understood, she might have a chance. She swallowed, shivered, tried to speak.

“Who . . . who are you?” she said. It came out as a bare whisper.

There was a momentary silence. This was followed by a shuffling sound. He was coming over.

“Please don’t touch me.”

Corrie could hear him breathing. She realized that maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to attract his attention again. And yet her only hope was to engage him somehow. She swallowed again, repeated the question.

“Who are you?”

She felt him leaning over her. A wet hand touched her face, broken nails scratching her skin, the huge fingers callused and warm. She turned away with a stifled cry.

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. She tried to lie still, to ignore it. It squeezed her shoulder, then moved down her arm, stopping to feel here and there as it went, then sliding further: horny and rough, the broken nails like splintered ends of wood.

The hand withdrew, then came back, sliding and slipping up the ridge of her backbone. She tried to twist away but the hand suddenly gripped her shoulder blade with a horrible strength. Involuntarily, she cried out. The hand resumed its crawl. It grasped the nape of her neck, squeezed. She felt paralyzed with terror. The squeezing grew harder.

“What do you want?” she choked out.

The hand slowly relaxed. She could hear breathing, and then some humming, and an undertone of rapid, singsong words. He was speaking to himself again. The hand caressed the back of her neck and reached up and rubbed her head.

She wanted to twist away but she forced herself not to. The hand kept rubbing, sliding down now over her forehead. It rubbed her face, stroked her cheek, pulled at her lips, tried to open her mouth, stinking horny fingers like a golem’s claw. She turned, but the hand followed the movements of her head, poking, always poking, as if inspecting a cut of meat.

“Please stop it!” she sobbed.

The hand stopped, and there was a grunt. Then the fingers slipped around her neck, from the front this time, and squeezed, first lightly, then a little harder. And then harder still.