T Klein: Ceremonies

At the foot of the altar it throws the brand aside, stretches up on tiptoe, fingertips reaching toward the ledge, and, like some long pale lizard, climbs laboriously up the rock face toward the woman. Crouching above her, in the absence of the Old One, it opens wide its corpse's mouth, tilts its face skyward, and starts to sing the words.

' "Too late," ' Abram Sturtevant repeated, for at least the sixth time. He fingered his coffee-colored beard. "Twas exactly what the man said, wasn't it?'

Galen Trudel nodded. 'His very words.' He and Matthew Geisel had gone up to the house and had found nothing but four cats who'd followed them back down here, where the others were standing in an awkward, puzzled group around the sleeping form of Freirs. The wasps had missed him; he lay in the grass on his belly, his wrists freed from the straps, arms thrown forward as if to embrace the earth.

'And we were too late, weren't we?' said Sturtevant. 'Too late for him. That would be what he meant. Had we arrived any sooner, we could've saved the poor old man's life.'

It made sense to them. It was just about the only thing that did.

All the rest was questions. Why had the stranger, so monstrously transformed by the venom and clearly in pain, died with a smile on his lips? And who was he, anyway? The men had come dashing down the slope from the road, hurrying toward his screams ringing like a woman's from the smokehouse, and had stumbled into a morass of questions – along with swarms of deadly insects, a pair of ruined corpses, and a sleeper who wouldn't wake up no matter what they did, even when Brother Rupert, his own arms and neck aching horribly from the stings, brought a hatful of cold water from the brook and threw it in Freirs' face. Freirs had simply turned back onto his belly, pressing his ear to the ground as if listening.

Questions. So many things they didn't understand…

They had prayed, all of them, over the bodies of the stranger and Deborah Poroth, and afterward had contented themselves with sending Klaus Buckhalter off to Flemington in his truck to summon the county police; on his way he would take the suffering Ham Stoudemire home, where Nettie could tend to his swellings. Rupert Lindt decided he would stay around, stings or no stings. 'I ain't leavin' till I get some answers,' he'd declared, nodding toward Freirs. 'Unless Klaus wants to drive him into Flemington.'

'Best not to move him,' said Sturtevant.

Freirs slept on. At least, now, he was freed from suspicion; the bound wrists had convinced them that here was no malefactor, just another victim.

But were they all victims? Even the stranger they'd seen die, red and swollen, at their very feet? And what had killed poor Sister Deborah, her (they remembered) so lately recovered from the attack of that demon-ridden cat? And where had Brother Sarr disappeared to? And who had tied up Freirs?

Questions. A sea of questions lapping at their ankles…

Silent and uneasy, the men shifted from foot to foot and looked at

Freirs lying motionless on the grass, the deserted farm, the frozen ranks of pines across the brook. They avoided looking at the two ruined corpses by the smokehouse; they avoided one another's eyes. This was not turning out as they'd expected; they had come, nursing their anger and their fear, to usher this intruder from their midst. .. and had found, instead, a mystery.

A breeze traveled up the slope toward the farmhouse, fluttering the leaves in the garden. Roses shook like fists in the waning light; the dark pines stirred. Night was coming on. At their feet the churning waters of the brook seemed strangely hushed. Somewhere in the forest a jay screamed, once, twice, three times, then fell silent. It was like the signal to begin.

Suddenly, overhead, the sky darkened. Beneath their feet, the ground shook. The land around them trembled with a deep, distant, almost inaudible rumbling.

'Oh, my God,' said Matthew, 'it's startin' again.'

He felt the planet pounding with the beating of his heart, the land beneath him rocking, blood squeezing once again through his veins. I'm alive! he thought dimly. But it was much too slow, too vast, and he realized it was coming from beneath him, and there were voices.

And darkness all around him.

'Looks like he's woke up.'

Sounds of footsteps.

'Son, listen to me.' Someone was standing above him. 'Listen, you've got to tell us-'

'His name's Freirs. Jeremiah Freirs.'

'No -' another voice' – it's Jeremy.'

Someone was shaking him. 'Listen… Jeremy. Tell us what's happened here. Where's Sarr Poroth?'

'Sarr?' He sat up, rubbed his eyes, searched in vain for his glasses. 'Ask-' He looked around him in the darkness, gripped by a sudden panic. 'Where's Carol?'

'Carol?'

'That's that girl o' his,' he heard someone say. "Twas her car we saw in the drive.' Rupert Lindt, it sounded like. But then another voice, much louder, demanded, 'What's she gone and done with Brother Sarr?'

He was confused. 'You mean – ' he stammered, 'you mean the Poroths still aren't back?'

'Deborah's dead, son,' said Matt Geisel.

And over the sound the earth was making, punctuated by tremors whose effects came more regularly now, they told him of the old man's death, and the body in the smokehouse, and the wasps.

'Rosie,' whispered Freirs, 'Deborah… ' He shook his head. It wasn't real, none of it, they were lying to him, and as soon as he found his glasses he would show them they were wrong. The world was a dark place, blurred and confusing. He felt the ground tremble. 'I don't know what's happened,' he said, raising his voice to compete with a rumbling that had grown progressively more insistent. 'All I know is I'm worried about the girl who came out here yesterday. We've got to find her.'

He heard someone cry out and saw the others turn to look. Behind them one of the men was pointing into the darkness, where several small grey shapes were racing madly round the lawn in endless circles.

'The cats!' said Geisel. 'My Lord, just look at 'em, they're chasin' one another's tails… '

Freirs remembered the Uroborus, the dragon with its tail gripped in its teeth. A full circle, that's what it signaled. Completion. The rolling year come round again to this most special day…

'What we ought to do,' one of them was saying, 'is try Shem Fenchel's dogs. I hear they're real good trackers.'

'We should head back to the trucks,' said someone else, 'and split up when we get to town.' They began moving back toward the road.

In the east, like a great cyclopean beast lifting its huge head, the moon rose majestically above the treetops, casting long gigantic shadows across the lawn. It was full tonight, the second full moon of the month, and very bright. To Freirs, without his glasses, there seemed something new in its face, something baleful and malign. Yet at its rising he felt a surge of sudden, unlikely hope: maybe in the moonlight they would be able to search for Carol… like those searchers in the moonlight, on the two other nights, for the two other girls. The memory flooded back to him.

'Bloodhounds,' another was saying, as they drifted off, 'that's what we need. We ought to go back to town and get those two pups

Jacob's son's been raisin' out behind his house-'

'Wait,' Freirs called after them. 'Listen to me!' He stumbled to his feet.

The men paused, turned to face him. 'What is it?' came a voice.

'I know where they are.'

Several figures left the group and approached him in the darkness. 'Yeah?' said one. 'Where's that?'

He nodded toward the woods. 'McKinney's Neck.'

The night has deepened and the sky has turned a velvet black when the thing on the hillside finishes its song. Tiny crow's-feet of blood mark the corners of its mouth where, stretched taut by widening jaws, the skin has torn like old paper. Beneath its feet the land is shaking rhythmically now, throwing up small clouds of dust, as if the entire world, wilderness and cities and seas, were echoing to an immense heartbeat.