“I think we might be fucked here, guys.”
It was a difficult point of view to argue with just then. Teagan could see the grim consideration of what Morris had told them in Kathy's expression as she scrolled through her document. The light from the screen reflected in her eyes seemed to magnify her determination. But it was a lot for Teagan to swallow. He managed with great effort to shake his head. “Nah. We'll stop it. You'll see. We'll stop it.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” Morris said quietly, then, “but I'm up for a fight, at any rate. Gotta jump off. Snow's getting bad up here, andâ”
A pause followed by a high-pitched scream caused both Teagan and Kathy to exchange alarmed looks.
“Morris? Hello? Morris?”
“I'm okay,” Morris said. “I'm fine. But I gotta go. I'll call you back.”
The phone disconnected, and for a few seconds, the two detectives just stared at it. Finally Teagan put it in his back pocket and took another swig of vodka.
“I'm sure he's fine,” he said.
“Sure,” Kathy agreed, taking a healthy gulp of her own drink. “It's Morris.”
“Aye, it's Morris,” Teagan said. But the knot of worry in his gut was reflected in Kathy's eyes. “Any luck finding anything?”
“A reference to the Blue People in the
Libro Novem Saecula
âthat is, the
Book of Nine Worlds
. I happen to have a copy of that one on here, but it's an abridged version. Let's hope we have enough.”
* * *
Morris hung up the cell and slipped it into his pocket, drawing out his gun. It seemed like he was doing a lot of discovery and rescue these last two days. His newest distress call was coming from a tan SUV across from his parked car. The driver-side door was open and a middle-aged man was half sprawled across a snow drift that had risen up to meet the tops of the tires. His legs appeared to still be in the vehicle, while his arm was draped over his down-turned face. A little blond girl of about eight was screaming and pounding on a back window with tiny mittened hands.
Remembering the beastly thing he'd seen when he'd come upon Dan Murphy stranded the night before, he opened his car door, grunting against the efforts of the wind to push it closed again, and cautiously got out. The wind bit into his cheeks and sailed beneath his clothes, making him shiver as he scanned the immediate area for signs of monsters, human or otherwise. The abandoned car appeared to be alone, collecting snow and losing heat by the minute.
Morris flashed his badge to the girl so she would know he was a police officer, and that seemed to calm her a little. She stopped screaming and her pounding on the window faded to muted little thumps, but Morris could see that she was shaking badly, probably from both the cold and from fright. Whatever she had seen was likely something no little kid should ever have to see.
He reached the open door of the SUV, and crouched by the man's head. Enough snow had blown in under the car that there was no space beneath for anything to hide, but no way for the tires to move. From the color of the skin on the man's neck, he could tell the man was dead. He touched a shoulder and found it stiff. When he tried turning over the body, he saw that the blood that had spilled from the man's head had frozen into crimson ice and adhered to the snow beneath. It took some tugging, but Morris got the man free and turned him over. Then he cried out and fell backward into the snow. The man's face was missing. Instead, a blood-soaked mess of fleshy frozen shreds of butchered meat and white protruding skull bones had replaced anything even vaguely resembling facial features.
With a quick glance at the girl in the back seat, who now sat quietly, apparently numb with shock, Morris hastily turned the body back over into the snow. The rest of it slid out from the car, and Morris gagged a little as the tattered stumps where the manâs legs had been thudded against the door frame. He rose with some difficulty; it felt like the snow had been trying to bury him under, just in the few minutes during which he'd been on his ass in it. He brushed it off as best he could, instinctively repulsed by the hard clumps of ice which clung to his coat and gloves. He unlocked all the doors from the panel on the driver-side door and went back to the girl.
When he opened her door, he was surprised to find that although she was bloody and a little bruised, she was not seriously injured. She was a tiny wisp of a thing, doll-like in her features. Her long blond hair had clumpy streaks of crimson in it, just under her wool hat, and a small cut on her cheek had trickled a tear of blood that had almost made it to her jaw before drying. Her mittens had dark brown smudges on them. Similarly colored stains on her light blue parka looked unnervingly like smeared handprints.
“Hi,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. “I'm Oliver. What's your name?”
“Jill. My family calls me Jilly.”
“Hi, Jilly,” he said.
She looked up at him with round, haunted hazel eyes and in a monotone, replied, “You're not my family.”
“Uh, yeah, of course. You're right. I'm a police officer, and I want to help you, Jill. I want to get you out of here.”
“It took my mom,” she whispered. Then, a little above a whisper, she added, “My brother, too. Kenny. And my dadâit killed him, didn't it?”
“Was that your dad that was driving?”
She nodded, tears forming in her eyes.
“I'm so sorry, honey,” he said, and then fell silent as she bent her head and cried softly. It broke his heart to see her crying, this little blond angel, an innocent little child, over a loss too big for words. But indeed, no words came out; nothing seemed to do justice to that kind of pain, that kind of horror. Nothing would adequately explain the terrible wrongness, the impossible strangeness of having her mother and brother taken away from her and her father torn apart by the very monsters she had spent the first few years of her young life being convinced were not real. He just let her cry, because sometimes tears were stronger, safer, more powerful, more honorable than words could ever be. And when her crying had reduced to sniffles, he squeezed her shoulder.
“We should go, Jill,” he told her. “It's not safe here.”
“I know,” she said, and exhaled a shuddery breath.
“Do you have someplace I can take you? Some family, or a family friend?”
She looked up at him with big hazel eyes still shining with tears. “Ms. Harper. My mom always told me that if anything bad happened and she and my dad couldn't get to me”âfresh tears spilled down her cheeksâ”that I should go to Ms. Harper's.”
“Okay,” Morris said, helping her out of her seat belt (she was still dutifully buckled in) and out of the SUV. “Do you think you can guide me there from here?”
Jilly nodded. She felt like such a small thing, so fragile, as he steered her by the shoulders to his car. She went around and got in the passenger seat, buckling the seat belt again. The gesture made him smile softly as he got behind the wheel and buckled his own seat belt.
“Okay, Jill, lead the way.”
She directed him back toward the center of town and down a few side streets to a dead-end cul-de-sac of large houses and landscaped lawns. She pointed at a brown cedar-shingled three-story Dutch Colonial house numbered six, and he pulled into the driveway.
Morris put the car into park. “Come on. I'll walk you up to the house and explain everything to Ms. Harper,” he said gently.
The little girl nodded, allowing him to lead her to the house.
Morris listened to the surrounding stillness as they walked up the driveway. It was unnerving, how quiet it was. Even the sound of snow, which should have crunched beneath their feet and blown dustily about in the wind, was muted. There was something about snow, especially that much snow, that deadened everything, darkened it even in the day. It created a perception of being isolated, alone in a world of feathered white crystal. It was a dangerous thought in its all-encompassing pervasiveness, the kind of thought that made a person sit amid all the silence, let it surround him, deafen and silence him, weigh down his limbs, lull him to cold, shadowed sleep....
He shook his head. Deep down, the beginning waves of unease were washing back and forth inside Morris, but he kept walking. It was far more likely that whatever was wrong was out here with them instead of inside that house, but to be sure, Morris kept a hand on the butt of his gun.
When they reached the front door, he knocked heavily. There was no mail in the mailbox, he noted. It was just another little jolt of reality, of the disconnect between Colby and the rest of the world. It made him shiver.
“I don't hear Hunter,” Jilly said.
“Sorry?”
“Ms. Harper's dog. Usually, he barks like crazy when someone knocks on the door.”
Morris frowned. He didn't say anything, but those waves of unease were beginning to crest.
He knocked on the door again. From within came sounds of movement, and a soft and somewhat elderly-sounding voice said, “I'm coming.”
The door opened a crack and the muzzle of a shotgun peered out. Immediately, Morris shoved Jilly behind him. Grasping the stock and trigger in a death grip were two bony white hands with neatly manicured and pink-painted nails. The sliver of face visible in the doorway was equally as bony and white, with one sharply intelligent brown eye and the corner of a firmly set and delicately thin-lipped mouth.
“Uh, Ms. Harper?”
“Who's asking?” The barrels of the shotgun didn't waver.
“Detective Oliver Morris. I have someone here I think you know.” He gestured for Jilly to come around, and when she did, Ms. Harper immediately lowered the shotgun and opened the door. She leaned the weapon against the door frame and swept Jilly up in a hug. The little girl started to cry again.
“Oh, Jilly, my baby, my baby,” she cooed into the girl's hair, stroking her back. Over her head, she asked, “Her parents? Kenny?”
Morris shook his head, and the old woman's face fell. She smoothed an errant strand of silver-white hair back toward the bun from which it had escaped and sighed.
“It was the men with the glowing mouths,” Jilly said in a small, flat voice. “They came out of the woods. Out of the snow.” A sudden thought seemed to seize her, and she turned to Morris, as if really aware of his presence for the first time. “The snow brought them. Or they brought the snow. I don't know which. But they had monsters, and the monsters hurt my dad.” The girl sniffled, and Ms. Harper took her by the shoulders and said, “Jilly, honey, do you want to lie down?”
“No,” the little girl replied in that same small, flat tone.
“Okay. Why don't you help yourself to some milk and a snack from the fridge, okay? I have to talk to the policeman.”
The girl gave them both a hesitant glance but headed off down the hall. Ms. Harper watched until she was out of sight and then turned back to Morris.
“My apologies about the shotgun,” she said, extending her hand. “What with everything going on, I couldn't be too careful. Julianne Harper. I've been a friend of Jilly's family for years.”
“Not a problem, Ms. Harper,” Morris answered, shaking her hand. “Frankly, I'm relieved to be able to bring the girl to someone I can feel confident will protect her.”
Ms. Harper gave him a small smile, then slid gracefully around him to relock the front door. “Those . . . things out there, whatever they are, got my dog this morning. I couldn't . . . I just couldn't get back to him fast enough with the gun.” The woman's eyes glistened with tears that she seemed determined not to shed. “And Jill's parents. . . her poor dear brother . . . I take it those same things got to them as well?”
“Looks that way,” Morris said. “I found Jill there in the back of the family SUV. Her mother and brother were gone. Her father, what was left of him, had, if you'll pardon my language, spilled out into the snow.”
Ms. Harper shook her head. She was a fit, attractive woman for a late sixty-something, and moved with a kind of grace and elegance that Morris immediately admired. She gestured for him to sit on a plump easy chair in the sitting room. Behind them, Morris could hear Jilly clanging around in the kitchen.
“Those poor people. Evan and Bernadette were good parents. They loved their children so much. She was a radiology nurse, you know, and he did something with computers for a non-profit organization. Genuinely good people.” She sighed raggedly. “And Kenny. Good God. He was only eleven. I can't . . . I just can't imagine what Jilly's been through this morning.”
“She's a brave little girl,” Morris said. After a pause, he continued. “Ms. Harper, I know this is an unconventional request, but . . . well lately, we've found ourselves in an inarguably unconventional situation, so . . . I was wondering if Jill could stay with you? I don't know for how long, but I'd wager we'd all feel much better having her stay here with you than in some foster system. Truth be told, there aren't many systems in Colby that haven't broken down anyway, as you may have noticed.”
“I have,” she answered. “And Jilly can stay here for as long as she likes. She's always welcome. I love her like my own. I'll keep her safe.”
Morris patted her arm. “I know you will.”
“Oh, forgive my manners, Detective. May I offer you something warm to drink? Something to eat, perhaps?”
“Thank you, but no. I have some business to attend to.”
“I understand completely.”
“If it's okay, though, I'd like to come back and check on her when things settle?”
“Please do,” she said, offering him the first genuinely warm smile since he and Jilly had arrived.