a car rounded the corner, its headlights swinging around toward Walt as he opened the door and slid in onto the seat. He glanced at the car as it swept past, gunning toward Chapman Avenue.
“Slow down,” Walt said out loud. It was an old red Toyota with a dented fender and bent bumper. The Reverend Bentley sat hunched behind the wheel, looking straight ahead, his face hidden by shadow.
15
I N HIS NIGHTMARE A RGYLE fled along a stone corridor deep in the earth. The shadows of insects twitched on the walls, and there was a metallic rasping and clicking like beetles in a can. Orange firelight glowed from vast rooms hidden behind half-closed doors, and from all around him there came the sound of moaning and shrieking and knocking, as if from something that had once been human but was human no longer, shrieks cut off sharp only to be taken up again in a monotony of pain.
There came into his mind the terrible certainty that he was running headlong
toward
something, not away from it now, running, perhaps, to embrace that pain. Soon the shrieks and howls would be his own. Inevitably there hovered before him, far away down the dim corridor, a disembodied head, its mouth working spasmodically, its face half turned away so that its eyes were hidden by an iron-dark shadow. There was the smell of sulphur and the corruption of rotten things, of death and hot metal. The face swiveled slowly toward him, and a voice whispered unintelligibly, like a sand-laden wind off the desert. He held his ears against it.
He woke up trying to scream. He heard his own voice rasp in his throat, and he launched himself forward, scrambling off the end of the bed, falling to the floor, his legs tangled in the sheets, his eyes adjusting to the moonlight in the dim bedroom. There was a slow and steady knocking, like someone beating on the pipes beneath the house, and a creaking sound like loose floorboards. Distantly, like ghost voices over a telephone, there sounded the echo of the shrieking and moaning that he’d heard in his nightmare, and he pressed his hands over his ears as he staggered to his feet, yanking open the top drawer of his dresser.
Inside lay two jars—common pint-size peanut butter jars, seemingly empty. He drew one out and shakily unscrewed the lid, and there was the faint, brief sound of a human cry in the closed air of the room. And at that moment the knocking ceased, the moaning and shrieking evaporated. The air was still heavy with sulphur and the smell of hot metal lingering like smoke, but that, too, was dwindling.
He was safe. For the moment he was safe.
He pulled himself free and pushed up onto his hands and knees. Although the window was open to the wind and rain, he was sweating hot. This wasn’t the first time that he had fought to wake up from the dream. Each time it was more real, more solid, and even now the walls of his bedroom looked insubstantial to him, barely opaque, as if they were film projections on black basalt. There was a noise like the rustling of insect wings in the depths of his mind, and staticky, disembodied voices muttering obscenities—infantile idiot gibberish.
He picked up the jar and twisted the lid back on tight. What had been in it was used up, and what remained was a useless leathery shaving of human flesh. He dropped the jar and its contents into the trash can next to the dresser, then walked across to the window, where he leaned out into the morning darkness. Soon, it seemed to him, there would come a night when the dream would take him with it, just as some similar tentacle of Hell had reached out to clutch at Murray LeRoy.
Stop it. He squeezed his eyes shut. This was nonsense. He would still beat it.
There weren’t many jars left. He needed something else to offer—more spirit jars. Something. And soon it would demand something more solid than the dying exhalations in the spirit jars. But when? Each night was worse than the last: the shadows more dense, the sounds more anxious,
“Slow down,” Walt said out loud. It was an old red Toyota with a dented fender and bent bumper. The Reverend Bentley sat hunched behind the wheel, looking straight ahead, his face hidden by shadow.
15
I N HIS NIGHTMARE A RGYLE fled along a stone corridor deep in the earth. The shadows of insects twitched on the walls, and there was a metallic rasping and clicking like beetles in a can. Orange firelight glowed from vast rooms hidden behind half-closed doors, and from all around him there came the sound of moaning and shrieking and knocking, as if from something that had once been human but was human no longer, shrieks cut off sharp only to be taken up again in a monotony of pain.
There came into his mind the terrible certainty that he was running headlong
toward
something, not away from it now, running, perhaps, to embrace that pain. Soon the shrieks and howls would be his own. Inevitably there hovered before him, far away down the dim corridor, a disembodied head, its mouth working spasmodically, its face half turned away so that its eyes were hidden by an iron-dark shadow. There was the smell of sulphur and the corruption of rotten things, of death and hot metal. The face swiveled slowly toward him, and a voice whispered unintelligibly, like a sand-laden wind off the desert. He held his ears against it.
He woke up trying to scream. He heard his own voice rasp in his throat, and he launched himself forward, scrambling off the end of the bed, falling to the floor, his legs tangled in the sheets, his eyes adjusting to the moonlight in the dim bedroom. There was a slow and steady knocking, like someone beating on the pipes beneath the house, and a creaking sound like loose floorboards. Distantly, like ghost voices over a telephone, there sounded the echo of the shrieking and moaning that he’d heard in his nightmare, and he pressed his hands over his ears as he staggered to his feet, yanking open the top drawer of his dresser.
Inside lay two jars—common pint-size peanut butter jars, seemingly empty. He drew one out and shakily unscrewed the lid, and there was the faint, brief sound of a human cry in the closed air of the room. And at that moment the knocking ceased, the moaning and shrieking evaporated. The air was still heavy with sulphur and the smell of hot metal lingering like smoke, but that, too, was dwindling.
He was safe. For the moment he was safe.
He pulled himself free and pushed up onto his hands and knees. Although the window was open to the wind and rain, he was sweating hot. This wasn’t the first time that he had fought to wake up from the dream. Each time it was more real, more solid, and even now the walls of his bedroom looked insubstantial to him, barely opaque, as if they were film projections on black basalt. There was a noise like the rustling of insect wings in the depths of his mind, and staticky, disembodied voices muttering obscenities—infantile idiot gibberish.
He picked up the jar and twisted the lid back on tight. What had been in it was used up, and what remained was a useless leathery shaving of human flesh. He dropped the jar and its contents into the trash can next to the dresser, then walked across to the window, where he leaned out into the morning darkness. Soon, it seemed to him, there would come a night when the dream would take him with it, just as some similar tentacle of Hell had reached out to clutch at Murray LeRoy.
Stop it. He squeezed his eyes shut. This was nonsense. He would still beat it.
There weren’t many jars left. He needed something else to offer—more spirit jars. Something. And soon it would demand something more solid than the dying exhalations in the spirit jars. But when? Each night was worse than the last: the shadows more dense, the sounds more anxious,
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