Arlen’s fatigue drained away as he waited, the physical effects of the attempt to connect with McGrath’s ghost easing. Damn it, he’d thought it might work. A wild idea, to be sure, but on a day such as this, when all he’d known to be true had blown apart beneath the mortar shells of firsthand experience, wild ideas had seemed possible. Just because you can reach us doesn’t mean we’re required to help, Tolliver had whispered from the beyond, and it had been the truth. But Arlen had thought, had hoped, that perhaps he could coerce such help.
McGrath hadn’t answered him, though, hadn’t heeded his request or even allowed proof that whatever form of him remained could hear Arlen at all.
Come on, he thought, searching the road for McGrath’s sons. Come on, damn it, let’s get on with this.
The mosquitoes buzzed around him and drank of his blood and he forced himself not to react. The boys were out there somewhere, and they knew this swamp far better than he did.
He finally saw them. Saw one at least. And when he did, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of true admiration. This man, this boy, he moved through the woods as quiet as a snake. He was coming up through the water just outside the reeds, and even though he was moving steadily, he’d somehow avoided Arlen’s eyes until just now, when he was halfway down the length of the road. He held a shotgun in his hands, just above the waterline, and he shifted sideways here and there to avoid obstructions that Arlen couldn’t even see. He was nearing the place where Arlen had once hidden in the reeds. He’d detected it somehow, had looked from a great distance away and spotted some small disturbance there that told him it was an area of danger. Unlike his father, he no longer trusted the sheriff’s car, not after the gunfire.
The water eddied around Arlen, and Tate McGrath’s corpse shifted in it slightly, his legs bobbing against Arlen’s back, trying to sink but prevented by the roots below. As his father’s body floated in the water, the boy moved on, moved like a creature of the swamp, and that, of course, was exactly what he was. Arlen watched him and thought that in his own way this boy was very much like Paul—gifted, truly and deeply gifted, at a very particular craft.
It was almost a shame that he had to die.
Arlen lowered his cheek to the stock of the Springfield, sighted, and trained the muzzle on the boy’s chest. He was close enough that a headshot was possible, and Arlen thought maybe that’s what he would take, even if conventional wisdom ruled against it. He’d end things quicker that way.
No.
He wasn’t sure he heard the word. A whisper in his brain but so faint, so weak, that at first it seemed like a figment. Then he heard it again, and this time it was clearer and seemed pained, as if the delivery of the word came at a terrible strain. No!
Arlen pulled his head away from the stock of the Springfield and looked back at Tate McGrath’s body. The legs were banging against Arlen, the only form of contact he had with the corpse, and the eyelids had slipped nearly closed. But he was calling to Arlen. He was calling out for a second chance.
Arlen reached out and laid a hand on McGrath’s chest, close to the knife wounds, and whispered, “Come around, did you?”
Don’t take that shot. Don’t.
Arlen slid soundlessly back around the tree, so that he was hidden completely, and, with his hand pressed firmly on the corpse, watched the edges of the world shudder and go gray again.
“I told you I’ll kill them all,” he whispered, his face close to the dead man’s. “I wasn’t lying. You don’t want me to take that shot, you best be prepared to guide me to Paul. It’s the only thing that saves them.”
I will.
“How many are there?”
Three. Only my boys. That’s all. They’re my sons. They’re my—
“Owen Cady was a son,” Arlen whispered.
You’ve settled that. Was me that killed him, and you’ve settled that.
“Do you have Paul? Is he here?”
Yes. Yes, he is here.
“Where? That cabin?”
No.
“Where?” He was talking in the softest whisper he could, but even that was a risk. The trance was intensifying, pulling him in deeper and pushing the real world farther away, and he couldn’t afford to let it go on for long. A few more seconds, at most. If Tate wouldn’t help him in that time, or couldn’t, he’d let him go and kill the first of the sons. He’d have to.
Not the cabin. Other side. The creek. Under the dock.
“Under?” Arlen echoed, his voice barely audible. “He’s dead? You killed him, too, you—”
Alive. In chains. We was waiting on Solomon. He’ll be here soon enough.