Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

He looked at his watch. After nine o'clock. He glanced out the window. It was growing dark. They would start the fireworks soon now. He thought suddenly of Nest. She would be sitting with everyone else, at risk. He could hear Evelyn saying to him, as she had on the last night of her life, "Robert, you get right out there and find that girl and bring her home."

He grabbed his flashlight off the counter and went out the door in a rush.

By now, the largest part of the Fourth of July crowd had abandoned the playgrounds, ball diamonds, and picnic tables to gather on the grassy slopes that flanked the toboggan slide and ran down to the river's edge. The fireworks would be set off over the bayou from a staging area located on a flat, open stretch of the riverbank below. A line had been strung midway up the slope to cordon off the crowd from the danger zone. Strips of fluorescent tape dangled from the line, and volunteers with flashlights patrolled the perimeter. The spectators were bunched forward on the hillside to the line's edge, settled on blankets and in lawn chairs, laughing and talking as the darkness descended. Children ran everywhere, sparklers leaving bright comet tails in the wake of their passing. Now and again a forbidden firecracker would explode off in the trees to either side, causing old people to jump and parents to frown. Shadows deepened and the outlines of the park and its occupants grew fuzzy. By the blackness of the river, a trio of flashlights wove erratic patterns as the staging crew completed their preparations for the big event.

Nest Freemark sat with her friends on a blanket, eating watermelon slices and drinking pop. They were situated high on the slope to the west of the slide where the darkness was deepest and the park lights didn't penetrate. There were families around them, but Nest couldn't see their faces or recognize their voices. The gloom made everyone anonymous, and Nest felt comfortable in that environment. Aside from her friends, she was anxious to avoid everyone.

She had come into the park late, when dusk had begun to edge toward nightfall and it was already getting hard to see. She had crossed her backyard with a watchful eye, half expecting the demon to leap out at her from the shadows. When Pick had dropped onto her shoulder as she pushed her way through the bushes, she had jumped in spite of herself. He was there to escort her into the park, he had informed her in his best no–nonsense voice. He had been patrolling the park since sunset, riding the windless heat atop Daniel, crisscrossing the woods and ballparks and playgrounds in search of trouble. As soon as Nest was safely settled with her friends, he would resume his vigil. For the moment, everything was peaceful. There was no sign of the demon. There was no sign of John Ross. The maentwrog, still imprisoned in its ravaged tree, was quiet. Even the feeders were staying out of sight. Pick shrugged. Maybe nothing was going to happen after all.

Nest gave him a look.

When Pick left her on nearing the crowded pavilion with its cotton–candy, popcorn, hot–dog, and soft–drink stands, she moved quickly toward the rendezvous point she had settled on with her friends. One or two people glanced her way, but no one called out to her. She was stopped only once, by Gran's friend Mildred Walker, who happened to be standing right in front of her as she passed and couldn't be avoided. Mrs. Walker told her she was sorry about Gran and about her young friend Jared Scott, and that she wasn't to worry, that the Social Services people were going to see to it that nothing further happened to any of those children. She said it with such feeling and such obvious concern that it made Nest want to cry.

Later, Brianna confided to all of them that her mother had told her the Social Services people were already looking for temporary homes for the Scott kids. Her mother also told her that Jared was still in a coma and that wasn't good.

Now Nest sat in the darkness sipping at her can of pop and reflecting on how unfair life could be. Out on the river, in a sea of blackness, the running lights of powerboats shone red and green, motionless on the becalmed waters. There was no wind; the air had gone back to being hot and sticky, and the taste of dust and old leaves had returned. But the sky was thick with clouds, which screened away the moon and stars, and rain was on the way. Nest wished it would hurry up and get here. Maybe it would help cool things down, clean stuff up, and give everyone a fresh attitude. Maybe it would help wash away some of the madness.

A stray firefly blinked momentarily in front of her face and disappeared in the darkness. Somebody in a lawn chair sneezed, and the sneeze sounded like a dog's bark. A ripple of laughter rose. Robert made a comment about the nature of germs in people's mouths, and Brianna told him he was gross and disgusting. Robert stood up and announced he was off to buy some popcorn and would anybody like some? Nobody would, he was informed, and Brianna said he should take his time coming back, maybe even think about going home and checking his mouth in the mirror. Robert walked off whistling.

Nest smiled, at ease with herself. She was thinking how comfortable she felt, sitting here in the darkness, surrounded by all these people. She felt sheltered and safe, as if nothing could touch her here, nothing could threaten. How deceptive that was. She wished she could disappear into the gloom and become one with the night, invisible and substanceless, impervious to harm. She wondered if Pick was having any luck. She tried to picture what the sylvan would do to defend her if the need arose, and couldn't. She wondered if the demon was out there, waiting for her. She wondered if John Ross was waiting, too.

After a time, she began to think of Two Bears, wishing that he was still there and could help her. There was such strength in him, a strength she didn't feel in herself, even though he had told her it was there. They had names of power, he said. But hers was the stronger, the one with true magic. He had given her what he could; the rest must come from her.

But what was it he had given her? That brief vision of her grandmother as a young girl, running wild in the park with the feeders and the demon? An insight into her convoluted and tragic family history? She didn't know. Something more, she believed. Something deeper, more personal. Think. It was his desire to commune with the spirits of his people, the Sinnis–sippi, that had brought him to Hopewell, but it was her ties to the magic that had drawn him to her. Your people risk the fate of mine, he had warned, wanting her to know, to understand. No one knows who my people were. No one knows how they perished. It can happen to your people, too. It is happening now, without their knowledge and with their considerable help. Your people are destroying themselves.

We do not always recognize the thing that comes to destroy us. That is the lesson of the Sinnissippi.

But he might have been speaking of her father as well.

She stared into the darkness, lost in thought. It was all tied together. She could feel it in her bones. The fate of her friends and family and neighbors and of people she didn't even know. Her own fate. The fates of the demon and John Ross. Of O'olish Amaneh, too, perhaps. They were all bound up by a single cord.

lam not strong enough for this.

I am afraid.

She stared at nothing, the words frozen in her mind, immutable. Then she heard Two Bears' clear response, the one he had given her two nights earlier.

Fear is afire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so.

She sat alone in the darkness, no longer comfortable with pretending at invisibility, and tried to determine if she could do as Two Bears expected.

Twenty feet away, a shadowy figure in the deepening gloom, John Ross kept watch over her.