F. Paul Wilson - Gateways

“A sign of what?”

“That things in the clan was gonna head south real soon. I mean, you got eighteen-twenty guys and one woman, that’s trouble.”

“They seemed pretty tight when I saw them in town yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. I seen em from a distance a couple times. We always done some panhandlin, but now they’s become like professionals. I stay away from em cause we ain’t exactly on good terms.”

“Why not?”

“They was kinda pissed I left. Luke—he was sorta kinda like the leader—he called me a traitor and all sortsa stuff like that. But that don’t matter to me. I’m glad I got out. I didn’t wanta live like them no more. Y’know, like gypsies. They live on the boats or in what’s left of a bunch of old Indian huts on the shore. No runnin water, no lectricity, no TV.” He shook his head. “Man, I sure do love TV. Anyways, I wanted my own place where I didn’t have to sleep next to nobody cept myself.”

“A room of one’s own,” Jack murmured. He knew the feeling.

Carl grinned. “Hell, I got more than just a room, I got me a whole trailer.”

“But do you have any money in the bank?” Jack said as an idea hit him.

“Naw. Pretty much everthing gets spent just for livin.”

“Okay, then. What say I pay you a thousand bucks to take me to this lagoon?”

“A thousand?” Carl laughed. “You’re shittin me, right?”

“Nope. Five hundred when we leave, and another five when we get back. That sound fair to you?”

Carl licked his lips. “Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“But they’s gonna be awful mad if they find I brung an outsider to the lagoon.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Jack flipped up the back of his shirt to show Carl the Glock. “I’ll get you back home. I promise. And anyway, if we go in the afternoon, won’t they all be in town, begging?”

“Come to think of it, yeah. Specially this bein Friday.”

“What’s so special about Friday?”

He shrugged. “Lotsa people round here get paid on Thursdays, and on Fridays they’re happy the work week’s over, so they’re looser with their change. Saturday’s pretty much the same. But Sunday’s usually a bust.”

“Spent too much on Saturday night, right?”

“Yeah. Or they just come from church and did some givin there. Monday’s even worse.” He scratched his jaw. “So yeah. We should have the lagoon pretty much to ourselfs this afternoon.”

“Then that’s when we’ll go. A quick trip for a quick look-see. In and out. Easiest thousand you ever made.”

Carl took a breath. “Okay. But since my car ain’t workin, you gotta drive me down to the waterside.” He began picking up his golf balls. “Guess I better get movin. Gotta get home, gotta find us a boat.”

“How’d you get here without a car?”

“Bike. How else?”

More power to you, pal, Jack thought. Maybe the thousand would let Carl repair his junker Honda.

He got directions to Carl’s trailer park—it was the one Jack had seen between the auto body place and the limestone quarry—and continued his jog.

2

Semelee stood with Luke a couple dozen feet from Devil’s gator hole and watched. The big gator lay half sunk in the water at the shady end, his eyes closed. The water around his left flank wound was tinged red. At first she thought he was dead, but then she saw his sides pull in a little as he took a breath.

“He’s still bleeding,” Luke said.

“I know,” she said through her clenched teeth. “I got eyes.”

She felt so on edge this morning she wanted to take a bite out of somebody.

Devil was the biggest gator anybody’d ever seen, so it made sense he’d have the biggest gator hole in the Glades. Like all gators, as the winter dry season began, he’d scrape out all the vegetation from this low spot in the limestone floor and create a big wallowing hole. Fish would work their way into it, turtles and frogs too, and even some birds would come around to see if they could snag a quick meal. Sometimes those birds and turtles became gator snacks.

In the wet summers gators left their holes and spread out through the Glades, but not this year. The dry spell made gator holes more important than ever.

The edges of Devil’s hole were piled high with muck he’d scraped out. This provided rootin soil for things like cattails, swamp lilies, ferns and arrowleaf. Yellow-flowered spatterdock lilies floated on the surface of the blood-tinged water.

Devil lifted his head and let out a hoarse, rumbling bellow, then let it flop back down into the water as if it was too heavy to hold up.

“He’s hurt in, Luke. Hurtin bad.”

Because of me, she thought.

Guilt scalded her. She’d considered Devil indestructible, invincible, almost supernatural. But he wasn’t. He was just a big, misshapen gator who would have been happy spendin his days doin what gators do: lolling in his hole, eatin this and that, waitin for the rains.

But no. Semelee couldn’t let him be. She had to roust him out of his comfy hole and lead him out of the Glades into the outer world where he didn’t belong. The result was he got hurt. Hurt bad.

“He can’t die,” she said. “He just can’t.”

She had this terrible feeling that if Devil died, part of the spirit of the Glades would die with him. And it would be all her fault.

“It was that guy,” Luke said. “That city guy you been takin a shine to. He done this.”

“No, he didn’t. I already told you that. He didn’t have nothin to do with hurt in Devil. It was the old lady. She’s the one. She’s some sorta witch. So’s her dog.”

In a way Semelee was secretly glad that the old witch’s spell, or whatever it was, had kept Devil out of her yard. Because she’d seen her man, the special one, place himself between Devil and his father. She’d’ve had to go through him to get to the old man, and that would’ve meant hurt in him, maybe even killin him, somethin she definitely didn’t want to do. But it had showed her that he was made of good stuff. That was important.

“I say we do all three of them—old lady, father, and son—and have done with it.”

“No. I told you: The son ain’t to be touched.”

Luke grumbled. “All right. We’ll have another go at the old guy, but the lady…what’re you gonna do about her?”

“Don’t know yet. We can’tdo her unless we can get to her. I’ll think of somethin. But it’ll have to wait till the lights is done. I ain’t lettin nothin get between me and the lights.”

“Awright. But what do we do till the lights come? We goin panhandlin as usual?”

“Not durin the lights. We’ll just hang out. Besides, we don’t need to go beggin cause we’ll be gettin a hunk of cash from those dredgin guys when they finish at noon.”

“What if they try to stiff us?”

“They won’t. They ain’t gettin out of the lagoon less’n they pay up.”

But Semelee didn’t want to think about dredgin or money or nothin cept the lights. Anticipation thrummed through her like she was a plucked guitar string. The lights’d start tonight and run for three days. But this year would be like no other. This time they wouldn’t be underwater, which meant they’d be bigger and brighter and better than ever before.

Starting tonight, everything in her life would change. She sensed it, she knew it.

3

Tom had been watching the Weather Channel’s reports on Hurricane Elvis. It continued to move south off Florida’s west coast; although its winds had increased to 90 miles an hour, it was still a Category I. And no threat to Florida at this point.

He was just finishing his cup of coffee when Jack came through the door, dripping with sweat.