The Influence(114)

Ross hung up feeling more anxious than he had before he called. What until this moment he’d considered a pretty good plan was now looking more like a half-assed Hail Mary, and he wished he had more time to flesh out the details. But he thought of Jill, thought of Lita, thought of his Aunt Kate and everyone else whose innocent lives had been ended or overturned as a result of this monster, and he knew that he needed to act now.

What was it that McDaniels had said?

I think it’s ready to hatch.

If he waited any longer, it might be too late, and he saw in his mind Jill’s final painting: that terrible demon standing amidst the smoldering ruins of Magdalena.

He barely slept that night, and, wanting to get an even earlier start than originally planned, called Kevin at four-thirty in the morning to wake him up. But it turned out that Kevin was already awake for reasons of his own, and Ross picked him up shortly after five. They packed three boxes of mysterious materials in the trunk, grabbed some coffee and donuts from what might have been the last Winchell’s still in existence, and hit the highway, heading south.

Kevin was a captive audience, and Ross filled him in on more details as they drove. He had several hours to argue his case, and while he realized how fantastical it all seemed, he did not get the impression that his nephew thought he was making it up out of whole cloth. Maybe Kevin didn’t believe all of it, but there was enough detail and specificity that at least some of it seemed to ring true.

Or Kevin was starting to sense something himself.

The road had been dirt for awhile now, and ahead on the horizon they could see the tips of the mountains that bordered the southern edge of town. Now that he was nearly there, Ross’ stomach tightened. He had never been so frightened in his life. It wasn’t the quick fright of a movie jump scare or the tension of someone walking into a dark house wondering if something else was in there. No, this was more the dread a convicted man might feel stepping up to the gallows, the unwavering certainty that something horrible was going to happen and that there was nothing that could stop it.

The car rolled over a rise, and the chimney-shaped mountain, the one with the M on it, became clearly visible. The town below sparkled in the sun, and maybe if a person didn’t know better, all might have seemed perfectly normal. But Ross had been here before, and there were shadows where there should not have been, great swaths of land that looked as though they were recovering from a fire.

What was that creature? he wondered for the hundredth time. Where had it lived? Did it have a lair? What had it fed on? How had it not been noticed before? There were so many questions left unanswered, questions that would probably never be answered, and his logical brain rebelled against the unresolved chaos of it all.

He was of the belief that the creature was ancient, had been living on this land for centuries, perhaps millennia. It occurred to him that the monster’s luck had finally run out when it had been accidentally caught in that hail of celebratory bullets, and in a sort of ripple effect, once it had fallen to earth, once its luck had changed, it had started changing the luck of everyone around it.

Ross half-expected to see other creatures flying above the town—its brethren, waiting for its metamorphosis to complete—but the skies were unnervingly clear as they approached, no birds, no clouds, only endless pale blue.

Next to him, in the passenger seat, Kevin looked nervous. “Unc. Mind if I spark one up?”

“No,” Ross said. “I mean, no, don’t do it. Yes, I do mind. I need you clear-headed for this.” He glanced curiously at his nephew. “You don’t…feel any different, do you?” he asked. “I mean, you haven’t been hit with any brilliant new ideas about how to go about this, have you?”

Kevin smiled tightly. “Not yet.”

They kept driving.

Ross slowed the car as they came to the outskirts of the town, looking carefully around for anything amiss. There was no sign of McDaniels—which could be good, could be bad—and, feeling the tension in his arms, he drove past the ruined adobe house where they had picked up Father Ramos on their way out. Ahead, in front of Magdalena’s handful of small businesses, the street was empty.

No, not quite. In the center of the road stood a grimy little girl, wearing a torn granny dress and a wrinkled yellow blouse covered with dried blood stains. Ross recognized her immediately, and the skin prickled on the back of his neck. It was the girl from the farmer’s market, the daughter of the mushroom seller. He looked around the street, searching for the mom, but saw no sign of her.

His eyes still on the child, who had not moved a muscle, Ross pulled carefully up in front of the bar, pulling behind the only other vehicle he saw on the street: Jackass McDaniels’ dented red pickup truck.