Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

He smiled ruefully. "My loss. I overslept, then went straight to church. The Freemarks invited me." He drew up his good leg and clasped his hands about his knee. "I don't get to church as much as I should, I'm afraid."

She laughed. "So how was it?"

He hesitated, picturing in his mind the dark shapes of the feeders prowling through the sanctuary, Wraith stalking out of the gloom of the foyer, and the demon hiding somewhere farther back in the shadows. How was it? "It wasn't quite what I remember," he replied without a trace of irony.

"Nothing ever is." She came forward a step. "Are you alone this evening?"

The expressive dark eyes held him frozen in place. He looked away to free himself, then quickly back again. Nest had gone off with her friends. Old Bob had taken Evelyn home. He was marking time now, waiting on the demon. "Looks that way," he said.

"Do you want some company?" she asked, her voice smooth and relaxed.

He felt his throat tighten. He was tired of being alone. What harm could it do to spend a little time with her, to give a little of himself to a pretty woman? "Sure," he told her.

"Good." She sat down next to him, a graceful movement that put her right up against him. He could feel the softness of her shoulder and hip. She sat without speaking for a moment, looking at the people gathered about the pavilion, her gaze steady and distant. He studied the freckles on her nose out of the corner of his eye, trying to think of something to say.

"I'm not much of a dancer," he confessed finally, struggling to read her thoughts.

She looked at him as if amazed that he would admit such a thing, then gave him a quirky smile. "Why don't we just talk, then?"

He nodded and said nothing for a moment. He looked off toward the pavilion. "Would you like an ice cream or something to drink?"

She was still looking at him, still smiling. "Yes."

"Which?"

"Surprise me."

He levered himself to his feet using the staff, limped over to the food stand, bought two chocolate ice–cream cones, and limped back again, squinting against the sharp glare of the setting sun. It was just for a little while, he told himself. Just so that he could remember what it was like to feel good about himself. He sat down beside her again and handed her a cone.

"My favorite," she said, sounding like she meant it. She took a small bite. Her freckled nose wrinkled. "Hmmmm, really good." She took another bite and looked at him. "So tell me something about yourself."

He thought a moment, staring off into the crowds, then told her about traveling through Great Britain. She listened intently as he recounted his visits to the castles and cathedrals, to the gardens and the moors, to the hamlets and the cities. He liked talking about England, and he took time to give her a clear picture of what it was like there–of the colors and the smells when it rained, which was often; of the countryside with its farms and postage–stamp fields, walled by stone; of the mist and the wildflowers in the spring, when there was color everywhere, diffused and made brilliant in turn by the changes in the light.

She smiled when he was done and said she wanted to go someday. She talked about what it was like to run a coffee shop, her own business, built from scratch. She told him what it was like growing up in Hopewell, sometimes good, sometimes bad. She talked about her family, which was large and mostly elsewhere. She did not ask him what he did for a living or about his family, and he did not volunteer. He told her he had been a graduate student for many years, and perhaps she thought he still was one. She joked with him as if she had known nun all his life, and he liked that. She made him feel comfortable. He thought she was pretty and funny and smart, and he wanted to know her better. He was attracted to her as he had not been attracted to a woman hi a very long time. It was a dangerous way for him to feel.

At one point she said to him, "I suppose you think I'm pretty forward, inviting myself to spend the evening with you."

He shook his head at once. "I don't think that at all."

"Do you think I might be easy?" She paused. "You know."

He stared at her, astonished by the question, unable to reply.

"Good Heavens, you're blushing, John!" She laughed and poked him gently in the ribs. "Relax, I'm teasing. I'm not like that." She grinned. "But I'm curious, and I'm not shy. I don't know you, but I think I'd like to. So I'm taking a chance. I believe in taking chances. I think that if you don't take chances, you miss out."

He thought of his own life, and he nodded slowly. "I guess I agree with that."

The sun had dropped below the horizon, and darkness had fallen over the park. The band had begun playing, easing into a slow, sweet waltz that brought the older couples out onto the dance floor beneath the colored lamps that had been strung about the pavilion. Out hi the grass, small children danced with each other, mimicking the adults, taking large, deliberate steps. John Ross and Josie Jackson watched them in silence, smiling, letting their thoughts drift on the music's soft swell.

After a time, he asked her if she would like to take a walk. They climbed to their feet and strolled off into the darkened trees. Josie took his free arm, and moved close to him, matching his halting pace. They walked from the pavilion toward the toboggan slide, then down through the trees toward the river. The music trailed after them, soft and inviting. The night was brilliant with stars, but thick with summer heat, the air compressed and heavy beneath the pinpricked sky. It was dark and silent within the old hardwoods, and the river was a gleaming, silver–tipped ribbon below them.

They stopped on a rise within a stand of elm to stare down at it, still listening to the strains of the distant music, to the jumbled sounds of conversation and laughter, to the buzz of the locusts far back in the woods. On the river, a scattering of boats bobbed at anchor, and from farther out in the dark, over on the far bank of the Rock River, car lights crawled down private drives like the eyes of nocturnal hunters.

"I like being with you, John," Josie told him quietly. She • squeezed his arm for emphasis.

He closed his eyes against the ache her words generated within him. "I like being with you, too."

There was a long silence, and then she leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. When he turned to look at her, she kissed him on the mouth. He put caution aside and kissed her back.

She broke the embrace, and he saw the bright wonder in her eyes. "Maybe, just this once," she whispered, "I'm going to be a little more forward than I thought."

It took a moment for the import of the words to register, and then another for the familiar chill to run through him as the memories began to scream in the silence of his mind.

When he sleeps the night after O'olish Amaneh has given him the black walnut staff with its strange rune markings and terrible secret, he dreams for the first time of the future the Lady had prophesied. It is not a dream of the sort that he has experienced before. The dream is not fragmented and surreal as dreams usually are. It is not composed of people and places from his life, not formed of events turned upside down by the workings of his subconscious. The dream is filled with the sounds, tastes, smells, sights, and feelings of life, and he knows in a strange and frightening way that what he is experiencing is real.

He is not simply dreaming of the future; he is living in it.

He closes his eyes momentarily against the feelings this revelation generates within him. Then he opens them quickly to look about. The world in which he finds himself is nightmarish. It is dark and misted and filled with destruction. He is on a hillside overlooking the remains of a city. The city was once large and heavily populated; now it lies in ruins, empty of life. It does not smolder or steam or glow with fading embers; it has been dead a long time. It sits lifeless and still, its stones and timbers and steel jutting out of the flattened earth like ravaged bones.