John Connolly - Dark Hollow

Ellen's cry saved my life. As I turned to look at her, I heard a whistling sound at my back and saw a shadow move on the floor ahead of me. Something caught me a painful glancing blow to the shoulder, missing my head by inches, then the blade end of a spade swept by me. I grabbed at the wooden handle with my left hand, striking back with my right elbow at the same time. I felt it connect with a jaw, then used the momentum of the spade to pull the man behind me forward, using my right foot to trip him as he moved. He stumbled ahead of me, then fell to his knees. He stayed on all fours for a couple of seconds, then rose up and turned to face me, framed against the night by the open door behind him.

And I knew that this, at last, was Caleb Kyle. He was no longer posing as twisted and arthritic but stood tall and straight, his thin, wiry limbs encased in blue denims and a blue shirt. He was an old man, but I felt his strength, his rage, his capacity to inflict pain and hurt, as almost a physical thing. It seemed to radiate from him like heat and the gun in my hand almost wavered with the impact. His eyes were fierce and glowed with a deep, red fire, and I thought instinctively of Billy Purdue. I thought too of the young women left hanging from a tree and the pain they had suffered at his hands, and of my grandfather, forever haunted by his dreams of this man. Whatever pain Caleb himself had endured, he had visited it a hundredfold on the world around him.

Caleb looked at his dead boy lying close by his feet, then at me, and the intensity of his hatred rocked me on my heels. His eyes shone with a deep, malevolent intelligence. He had manipulated us all, evading capture for decades, and had almost succeeded in evading us again, but it had cost his son his life. Whatever happened after, some small measure of justice had been achieved for those poor, dead girls left hanging from a tree, and for Judith Mundy, who, I believed, had been taken deep into the darkness of Great North Woods by this man.

"No," said Caleb. "No."

It was only then that I began to understand why he had wanted so badly to beget a boy. I think if Judith Mundy had given birth to a daughter then his hatred would have led him to kill the child, and try again for a son. He wanted what so many men wanted: to see himself replicated upon the earth, to see the best part of himself live on beyond him. Except, in Caleb's case, that which he desired to see continue was foul and vicious and would have consumed lives just as its father had before it.

Caleb moved forward a step and I cocked the pistol. "Back up," I said. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

He shook his head, but moved back a few steps, his hands held out from his sides. He didn't look at me but kept his eyes fixed on his dead son. I advanced and stood beside Walter, who had raised himself to a sitting position, his uninjured right shoulder against the wall and blood thick on his face. He held his gun loosely in his right hand, but he was unable to focus and was obviously in severe pain. I wasn't doing so good myself. By now, Ellen was halfway down the stairs, but I held up a hand and told her to stay back. I didn't want her anywhere near this man. She stopped moving, but I could hear her crying.

In front of me, Caleb spoke again. "You'll die for what you did to him," he spat. His attention was now fully directed at me. "I'll tear you apart with my bare hands, then I'll fuck the slut to death and leave the body in the woods for the animals to feed on."

I didn't reply to his taunt. "Keep moving back, old man," I said. I didn't want to be with him in an enclosed space; not in the hallway, not on the porch. He was dangerous. I knew that, even with the gun in my hand.

He retreated again, then slowly moved down the steps until he stood in the yard, snow falling on his exposed head and his outstretched arms, light from the front room bathing him. His hands were held away from his sides and I could see the butt of a gun protruding from the back of his pants.

"Turn around," I said.

He didn't move.

"Turn around or I'll shoot you in the legs." I couldn't kill him, not yet.

He glared at me, then turned to his right.

"Reach around. Use your thumb and forefinger to take the butt of the gun, then throw it on the ground."

He did as I told him, tossing the gun into some pruned rosebushes below the porch.

"Now turn back again."

He turned.

"You're him, aren't you?" I said. "You're Caleb Kyle."

He smiled, a gray, wintry thing like a blight on the living organisms around him. "It's just a name, boy. Caleb Kyle is as good as any other." He spat again. "You afeared yet?"

"You're an old man," I replied. "It's you who should be afraid. This world will judge you harshly, but not as harshly as the next."

He opened his mouth, and the saliva made a clicking sound at the back of his teeth. "Your granddaddy was afeared of me," he said. "You look the spit of him. You look afeared."

I didn't reply. Instead, I tossed my head in the direction of the dead man on the floor behind me. "Your dead boy, was his mother Judith Mundy?"

He bared his teeth at me and made as if to move in my direction, and I fired a shot into the ground in front of him. It kicked up a flurry of dirt and snow, and brought him to a halt.

"Don't," I said. "Answer me: did you take Judith Mundy?"

"I swear I'll see you dead," he hissed. He stared beyond me to where his son lay, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he gritted his teeth against the pain he felt. He looked like some strange, ancient demon, the tendons on his neck standing out like cables, his teeth long and yellowed. "I took it to breed on, after I thought my other boy was lost to me, lost down a shithouse sewer."

It . "Is she dead?"

"Don't see how it's any of your business, but it bled to death after it had the boy. I let it bleed. It weren't of no account anyways."

"Now you're back."

"I came back for my boy, the boy I thought was lost to me, the boy that bitch kept from me, the boy all them bitches and sonsofbitches kept from me."

"And you killed them all."

He nodded proudly. "Them as I could find."

"And Gary Chute, the forestry worker?"

"He had no business being there," he said. "I don't spare them that cross my path."

"And your own grandson."

His eyes flickered for a moment, and there was something close to regret in them. "It was a mistake. He got in my way." Then: "He was a sickly one. He wouldn't have survived, not where we were going."

"You've got nowhere to go, old man. They're taking back their forest. You can't kill every man who comes in."

"I know places. There are always places a man can go."

"No, not anymore. There's only one place you're going."

Behind me, I heard a movement on the stairs. Ellen had ignored me and gone to Walter. I guessed that she would.

Caleb looked over my shoulder at her. "She your'n?"

"No."

"Shit," he drawled. "I saw you, and I saw your granddaddy in you, but my eyes must have deceived me when I saw you in her."

"And were you going to 'breed on her' too?"

He shook his head. "She was for the boy. For both my boys. Fuck you, mister. Fuck you for what you did to my boy."

"No," I said. "To hell with you." I raised the gun and pointed it at his head.

Behind me, I heard Walter groan and Ellen shouted "Bird" in her strange, cracked voice. Something cold buried itself in the soft flesh at the back of my head. Billy Purdue's voice said: "Your finger moves on that trigger, and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

I hesitated for an instant, then released my grip on the trigger and moved my finger away from the guard, raising the gun to show him that I had done so.

"You know what to do with it," he said.

I slipped the safety and threw the gun onto the porch.