Rise the Dark by Michael Koryta Page B

thin ribbons of flesh behind as he swept over remnant teeth of glass, and he was on his belly in the grass, gasping for air, when he saw a figure just ahead. He fumbled to get his gun upright and had nearly pulled the trigger when he recognized the boy from the orange tree, illuminated by the flames. He was offering a hand.
    Mark accepted it and the boy helped him to his feet and they stumbled away together as a window blew out somewhere upstairs and the fire roared through the old house.
    “It wasn’t me,” Mark said.
    “I know.” The boy released him and stepped aside, regarding the burning home with curiosity but no evident fear. “I saw them. I didn’t know you were inside, though. I saw them with the gas cans.”
    A siren rose over the sound of the flames and they both turned toward it. No emergency lights were visible yet, just the sound. The flames cast flickering orange glows over the palm leaves but out beyond the village was dark.
    “I think they hurt Dixie,” the boy said.
    “Yes,” Mark said. “They hurt her.” He rubbed his eyes as if to remove the image of the woman’s body jammed indifferently under the cellar stairs. “Do you know who they are?”
    The boy shook his head. “No, but they said the name you asked about before. The strange one.”
    “Garland?”
    “That’s it. They’re going to him now.”
    “Where?”
    “They didn’t say a place. And they said another name too. Eli.”
    Eli. It meant nothing to Mark. He said, “Do they work for Garland, is that it? Is he in charge?”
    “No. The one named Eli is in charge.”
    “How can you be sure?”
    “I just am. I know things, sometimes. Everyone here does. One day I’ll be better at it than I am now. But I know some things already. Eli is the worst one.” The boy was backing up as the flames grew taller and hotter. “He’s very bad.”
    Mark had trouble imagining anyone worse than Garland Webb, but he nodded and said, “Okay. Thank you for telling me. And wait, please. I need something from you. Please, it’s important.” He fumbled in his pocket with a bloody hand. “Son, I need you to take something for me and keep it until I’m back. Can you do that? It’s very important. It will help me find them and stop them from hurting anyone else.”
    He extended his cell phone with its photographs of the red truck’s license plate from earlier in the afternoon. He didn’t want to have it on him when the police came, didn’t want to have to explain any of the photos. He needed a head start. The boy regarded it suspiciously.
    “Why don’t you give it to the police?”
    “Because I need to find those people before the police do.”
    The boy looked into Mark’s eyes for a second and then turned his chin slightly, his gaze drifting up and over Mark’s shoulder.
    “I shouldn’t do it, but Walter says it’s fine.”
    A few short hours ago Mark would have told the boy to stop telling his tales about ghosts. Now he said, “Listen to Walter, son. It sounds like he knows something about what happens when bad people stay out of prison.”
    By the time the police arrived, the boy had pocketed the phone and was standing in the shadows just outside the circle of firelight, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered.
    “Is there anyone inside?” an officer asked.
    “Yes. But you’re not going to be able to help her now,” Mark said, and then he glanced back for the boy, but he was gone.

14
    D oug Oriel, known in Cassadaga as Myron Pate, had driven through the night and Janell slept as Florida fell behind them and they carved into the Georgia pinewoods. She had dreamed often and well in Cassadaga. Sometimes, they were memories of the Netherlands, her first days with Eli. Other times, visions of the dark world and the horrified faces of the foolish people who feared it. In the truck, though, she struggled to find deep enough sleep for dreams at all, and when they came, they were more like flashes of recent memory, Novak behind his