John Connolly - Bad Men

A dark blur shot by her from the hallway and she felt the dog’s fur brush against her shoulder as Max leaped and struck the Gray Girl, his jaws tearing at her throat as his weight knocked her away from the doorway. Linda slammed the door shut behind them, locking and bolting it, then sliding down its length until she came to rest on the floor. The collie, Claude, began to scratch at the door, trying to reach its companion. From outside she heard scuffling noises in the snow, and Max’s growls.

Then the dog howled sharply once, and all was quiet.

The five men stood on the edge of the shallow cliff, the stony beach some forty feet below them, and stared at the figure that stood amid the waves. Its features could not be distinguished, but there was no mistaking the arrow that pierced its torso. It remained still, despite the force of the water rolling in from behind. To its right was a rocky outcrop, blocking the pierced man from the view of Tell and Willard, on the boat.

“No way,” said Dexter. “No fucking way. I’ve taken a black bear with one of those arrows. There’s no way he can still be alive.”

Moloch regarded the sea in silence, then turned to Shepherd.

“Go down there and finish him.”

Shepherd shook his gray head once.

“Not me,” he said. “No.”

“I don’t think you heard me correctly. You seem to have turned an order into a request.”

Shepherd remained impassive. He had been watching Moloch carefully throughout the boat journey, growing more and more troubled by what he was seeing, and in the short time since their arrival on the island, his concerns had only increased. He had seen Moloch’s eyes glaze over when nobody was looking, his lips moving, forming unspoken words. During the ascent of the slope, Moloch had slipped more times than any of the others and his eyes seemed to be focused less on the climb than on the thin scrub and brush that had found purchase among the rocks. When they had reached the top, it had taken Dexter to alert him to the presence of the retarded man. Moloch had not been looking at the tower, or at the man in the bright orange vest. His gaze was fixed on the woods, and his lips were moving again. This time, Shepherd could distinguish words and phrases.

We move on.

Did they tell you to keep watch for me?

I told you I’d return.

The last was repeated, again and again, over and over like a mantra.

I told you I’d return. I told you I’d return. I told you-

“Like I just told you, not me,” Shepherd said. He didn’t break eye contact with Moloch, but he was aware of the gun in the other man’s hand. Throughout their confrontation, Shepherd’s own hand rested lazily against the folding stock of the Mossberg Persuader that hung from a leather strap on his shoulder. He had jacked a load as soon as they’d landed and his finger was inches from the trigger. Shepherd did not know what would happen if he was forced to kill Moloch. He guessed that he would have to take out Dexter too. Powell could go either way, he figured. Scarfe didn’t concern him. Scarfe just wanted to get out of this alive.

Moloch considered the other man carefully, then seemed to reach a decision.

“This once,” he said.

Shepherd nodded, and Moloch turned to Powell. Dexter, Shepherd noticed, had notched another arrow on his bow during the standoff. Shepherd wondered if it had been meant for him. We may yet find out, he thought.

“You do it, then follow,” Moloch told Powell.

“Shit,” said Powell, gesturing at Dexter, “it was this asshole couldn’t kill him, and now I got to go down there?”

Dexter didn’t react to the taunt. In the space of a couple of minutes, four white men had managed to get in his face, each one in a different way: Scarfe had laid a hand on him; Powell had insulted him; Shepherd had almost forced Dexter to kill him; and a retarded man with an arrow through his chest simply refused to die. Faced with so many possible targets, Dexter’s wrath had simply diffused, briefly leaving him more puzzled than angry.

“Just do it,” Moloch told Powell. “And quietly.”

Powell sighed theatrically and removed his gun from its holster. He rummaged in the pockets of his jacket until he found the suppressor, then attached it to the muzzle. Moloch’s insistence on silence puzzled him. There was nobody out here to hear a shot, and anyway, even if someone was outside, the wind and snow would muffle any noise. Still, Powell wasn’t about to argue with Moloch. Like Shepherd, he found Moloch’s behavior peculiar, but he wasn’t going to risk taking a bullet in order to point it out.

“How will I find you when I’m done?”

“There’s a path through the forest. You’ll pick it up behind the tower. Stay on it and it will lead you straight to us. For now, we move on.”

When he said the words, he looked puzzled.

We move on.

Shepherd said nothing, but his finger found the trigger guard of the Mossberg and remained there.

“We’re not waiting for Carl Lubey?” asked Scarfe.

“He’s not here and I want to get off the road and out of sight,” said Moloch. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re on a tight schedule. We’ll make for his place and take it from there.”

“There’s a snowstorm blowing,” said Scarfe. “And you don’t know the island.”

“You’re wrong,” said Moloch. “I know this island very well.”

Scarfe shook his head in disbelief and looked to the other men for support, but they were already preparing to follow their leader. Powell, meanwhile, shot Dexter a look of disgust, then began to descend the rocks, toward the beach. Scarfe watched him go until Dexter grasped his arm.

“By my reckoning, pussy,” he said, “you got no lives left.”

Dexter released him and spit once into the snow by Scarfe’s foot. Scarfe shot one last look at the figure that stood among the waves before adjusting his pack on his shoulder and following Moloch, Shepherd, and Dexter across the white road that skirted the woods. He expected Moloch to stop and look at a map or check a compass, but instead he moved purposefully into the trees. Within minutes, the four men were heading for the center of the island on an old trail that wound its way through the forest. While they walked, Scarfe unfolded his map from his pocket and tried to read it, hampered by darkness and snow and wind. It was a struggle, but he eventually confirmed what he had suspected from the moment they had found the trail.

It wasn’t detailed on the map.

Somehow, Moloch had found an unmarked path.

Moloch drifted. Sometimes he was beside Dexter, moving through a white forest, the snow melting on his face and hair. At other times there was no snow, just a harsh wind and frost upon the ground, and there were other men around him, dressed in furs and hand-stitched hides. Eventually, the two worlds began to coexist, like transparencies laid one upon the other, and he was both Moloch and someone else, a man at once known and unknown. Moloch was confused but not frightened by the sensation, for what he felt more than anything else was a sense of belonging, a feeling of returning. This was not home. This was not a place of solace or comfort. There was no shelter for him here, but it was the beginning. Here Moloch, or whatever he truly was, had flamed into being. Whatever else might happen here, he would at last reach an understanding of himself, and those torn pictures that had tormented him in so many dreams would reform themselves, enabling him to see himself as he truly was.

He was coming to recognize that all this was meant to be. His wife was always going to flee here, and he was always going to follow. Men would come with him, for men had come with him before, because that was the way it had always been. It had been taken out of his hands and all that he could do was follow the path to its end, and to the final revelation that awaited him.