The Influence(74)

Obviously.

That’s why it was trying to get in.

There was a fusillade of pounding on the door, and a small fist broke through the cheap wood—the same shriveled little hand that had left the coin on the shelf. Thinking fast, Tax kicked the door open and made a run for it, dashing out even as the creature connected to that horrible hand tried to disengage itself from the door. He didn’t look back, not wanting to see, but made a beeline for his Jeep, only a few yards away on the side of the shack.

The whistling was loud, filling the air around him, and if he hadn’t had to get to his vehicle so quickly, he would have plugged his ears with his fingers. But there was no time for wasted movement or extraneous thought, and he reached the Jeep, pulled the key out of his pocket, jumped in and started that mother up.

He wished he’d driven his pickup today—he’d feel a hell of a lot safer locked inside a cab than out in the open air—but this provided easy access and quick maneuverability, and he backed up, spun the car around—

—and saw what was after him.

It was a creature of the dump, with discarded wig hair and torn mismatched clothes. The size of a small child, it appeared to be female and was holding a tattered purse by its frayed strap. Beneath the castoff trappings, the face and body were brown and wrinkled with the dehydrated look of beef jerky. It pointed at him.

And the Jeep’s engine died.

Tax tried frantically to restart the vehicle, turning the key in the ignition, as the little creature waddled toward him on unsteady legs, still pointing.

Could there be more of them? He didn’t know, didn’t even have any idea what it was, but judging by the way it moved, he was pretty sure he could outrun it, and rather than continue trying to start the Jeep as the monster continued to approach, he decided to make a run for it. Pulling out the key, he leapt out and sped toward the road as fast as his feet would carry him.

From overhead, a crow swooped down, whistling the tune that was still issuing from the wrinkled mouth of the waddling creature. Other birds charged out of the sky, coming from nowhere, all of them whistling that maddening melody. One of them clawed the top of his head, another pecked the back of his neck, still others attacked his back. Crying out in pain, he tried to keep going but was engulfed in a whirling fury of feather and wing, talon and beak. Attempting to bat the birds away, he tripped over an unseen rock or piece of refuse and fell hard on his side, still trying to fend off the avian attack. Pecked and clawed relentlessly, it was all he could do to protect his face. He rolled over, turtling up duck-and-cover style.

And then the birds were gone.

He pulled his hands off his head, looked up to make sure it was safe—

And stared into the shriveled face of his whistling pursuer. This close, he could see the deepset empty eyesockets, the snakelike holes where a nose should be, the grim line of the lipless mouth. The wig was gone, and so was the purse, but he recognized the raggedy clothes as belonging to one of Linda Ferber’s kids. It lent the monster the appearance of an evil dwarf, and for all he knew, that’s exactly what it was. He tried to get up and run away, but that skinny arm reached out to hold him down, and the same tiny hand that had left the coin on the shelf grabbed a hank of his hair.

He was humming again, he realized, and for a few seconds, before the hand shoved his head down and smashed it into a rock, both the humming and whistling were in perfect harmony.





TWENTY FOUR




Ross took a shower in the morning before eating breakfast and going out to feed the chickens, but halfway through, water began splashing against his ankles. The drain was stopped up, and he washed his hair quickly before the pool at his feet overflowed the lip edge of the stall. He got out, dried off, and a few moments later, when he turned on the hot water in the sink in preparation for a shave, that drain was clogged, too. Deciding to skip the shave, he put on his clothes and walked across the yard to tell Lita and Dave—my landlords, he thought with a smile—but they were having their own plumbing issues. Dave was using a plunger on the kitchen sink, and Lita called out from the bathroom that the toilet was still overflowing.

“I don’t mean to pile on,” Ross said, “but my drains are all plugged up, too.”

Dave had worked up a sweat, and he put down the plunger and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his arm. “That’s it. We’re calling someone.”

Jackass McDaniels was at the ranch a mere twenty minutes later, the back of his truck packed with a sump pump and various types of drain-clearing equipment. “I was thinkin’ on the way over that maybe your septic tank’s full,” he said, getting out of the cab.