Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

Though I felt cold, I too had begun to sweat. I could not tell Lokken that I was afraid to go into the clearing. Just then the woods seemed very potent.

“Come on, we saw the car, we know he’s here,” said Lokken.

“Something’s funny,” I said. I almost thought I could smell cold water. But that was not possible.

“Come on. Let’s go. Move it.” I heard the revolver click against a tree as he shook it at me.

I went toward the circle of trees; light hovered in the clearing beyond them.

Then I went through the sentinel trees and stepped into the clearing. The sudden dazzle of light at first made it difficult to see. Smoke came from the banked fire at the clearing’s center. I took another step toward it. I wiped my eyes. There was no humming, vibrant noise of insects.

Then I saw them. I stopped walking. I could not speak.

Lokken noisily broke into the clearing behind me. “Hey, what’s goin’ on? Hey, Teagarden, they in here? You—” His voice ended as if chopped off with an ax.

I knew why Lokken had vomited when he had seen the body of Jenny Strand.

Polar Bears was in front, Duane behind him fixed to a shorter tree. They were pinned to their trees, both naked, their bodies blackened and hanging like crushed fruit.

Lokken came up beside me, making a noise in his throat. I could not take my eyes from them. It was the most savage thing I had ever seen. I heard the handgun thump onto the earth. “What the—” Lokken began. “What—”

“I was wrong,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ, I was wrong. She’s back after all.”

“What—” Lokken’s face had turned a glistening, cloudy white.

“It wasn’t Duane after all,” I said. “It was Alison Greening. They came up here last night and she killed them.”

“Jesus, look at their skin,” moaned Lokken.

“She was saving me. She knew she could get me any time.”

“Their skin…”

“She punished them for raping and killing her,” I said. “Oh my God.”

Lokken half-sat, half-fell into the tall grass.

“Now she’ll be after Duane’s daughter,” I said, suddenly realizing that another life was probably lost. “We have to get down to the farm right now.” Lokken was retching into the grass.

“How could someone — someone lift them two like that—”

“My crazy theory was right.” I said to him. “We have to get to the farm right now. Can you run?”

“Run?”

“Then follow me as soon as you can. Go down and drive your car to Duane’s place.”

“… place,” he said. Then his eyes cleared a little, and he picked up the gun and waved it at me. “You wait. You don’t go anywhere, hear?”

I bent over and pushed the gun aside. “I brought you here, remember? And do you think I’m strong enough to lift those two and pin them to trees like that? Now hurry up and get straight. If it isn’t too late, we have to keep this from happening again.”

“How—”

“I don’t know,” I said, and turned away from him, and turned again with an idea. “Give me your keys. You can hotwire Polar Bears’ car.”

When I got back down to the road I hastily got into the squadcar and twisted Lokken’s key in the ignition. The motor started at once. I rolled away from Polar Bears’ car and stepped the accelerator all the way down to the floor.

A tractor chugged down the road before Bertilsson’s church; it straddled two lanes. I blew the horn, and the straw-hatted overweight man on the tractor’s seat wagged his hand without looking back. I looked for the siren button and found it. The farmer jerked around on the seat, saw the car, and steered the tractor to the side of the road. I blasted the horn and zipped by.

When I drove up to the old farmhouse I could see nothing unusual — the mare grazed among the cows, the lawn lay ripped and burned, Alison was not in sight. I swallowed, turning into the drive, afraid that I would find her as I had found her father and Polar Bears. I braked as I cut the car onto the lawn, and jumped out before it had stopped rolling.

I could smell her — I could smell cold water, as if rain had just ceased to fall. My legs nearly refused to move, and in my stomach lay an iciness that fear had deposited there.

I began to jog up the path to Duane’s house. A door slammed. I realized that Alison Updahl had seen the squadcar pull into the drive. She came running around the side of her house. When she saw me instead of Polar Bears or Dave Lokken, she stopped running and stood hesitantly on the path, looking worried, pleased and confused all at once. The air seemed to tighten, as it had on my first night in the woods: it seemed to grow thick and tight with malevolence. “Run!” I shouted to the girl. I waved my arms, semaphoring. “Get going!” The smell of the quarry washed over us, and this time she too caught it, for she half-turned and lifted her head.

“Danger!” I yelled, and began to sprint toward her.

Wind knocked me down as casually as a breeze flips a playing card.

“Miles?” she said. “My father didn’t—”

Before she could say come home , I saw another woman, a smaller woman, appear momentarily on the path behind her. My heart froze. The shadowy second girl stood with her hands on her hips, looking at both of us. She vanished in the next instant. Alison Updahl must have felt some particle of the other’s force, and she twisted her upper body to look behind her. I saw the terror begin in her — it was as though life and will had suddenly drained from her. She had seen something, but I did not know what. I got up from the dust and stones of the path. “Take off,” I shouted to her.

But it was too late. She was too terrified by whatever it was she had seen, and she could not move. “Alison!” I shouted, and it was not the living girl I addressed. “Leave her alone!”

There was a whirring, typhoon-like noise of rushing, rattling wind. I turned in its direction, and was aware of Alison Updahl, stunned like a bird before a snake, turning slowly too. In the long grass before the road, wind was making a pattern: carving circles in flattened grass. Leaves and twigs began to fly together. Out on the road, stones and chunks of tarry asphalt lifted and flew toward the circling pattern.

I called to Alison Updahl, “Come toward me.” She jerked herself forward, stumbled. The air was filled with small flying bits of wood, with tumbling leaves.

Through the leaf storm I ran toward her. She had fallen on the path, and a shower of small branches and stones came cascading down upon her. I grasped her hand and pulled her upright.

“I saw something,” she muttered.

“I saw it too. We have to run.”

The whirling pattern exploded. Most of the twigs and leaves filling the air were blasted soundlessly away, and spun lifelessly down to earth all over the area between the two houses. Only a tall skeletal superstructure, a vague outline of brown and green, remained towering; then it too blew away. A few stones rattled around us. The noise of screeching air, as if we were in a hurricane, stayed with us. Again the grass was printing itself into wide circles.

Her mouth opened, but she could not speak.

I took her hand more firmly and started to run. As we came hurrying down the path. Dave Lokken pulled into the drive in Polar Bears’ car. He still looked like a man climbing out of a three-day drunk. He looked at the girl and me, running as hard as we could in his direction. “Hey,” he said. “We gotta get those bodies…”

The circling pattern on the grass moved in his direction. Then I saw the figure of the girl, still shadowy, that I had seen on the path appeal beside his car. Immediately, both windshields shattered. Lokken screamed and covered his face with his arms. A force I could not imagine pulled him from the carseat and through the open window at his side. He rolled across the gravel of the drive. His nose was pouring blood.