CHAPTER 17

The light of the rising sun crept down the rugged slopes of the mountains, diffused by the leaden sky so that the slow shift from the blackness of night to the gray of morning seemed to have no source at all. Slowly, out of the darkness emerged the ghostly fon-ns of the great jutting cliffs and the towering trees that flowed down from the timberline to the valley below.

Joey Wilkenson, sleep finally beginning to release him from its tight embrace, snuggled deeper into the bed, fighting off the slow wakening of his mind and body. As the cold of the morning seeped into his body, he closed his fingers on the covers to draw them closer around him. But something was wrong-instead of the soft down of his familiar comforter, he felt something rough in his fingers. He came instantly awake; his eyes blinked open. He was lying on his side, and the first thing he saw was a window.

A window with no glass in its empty frame.

A window that shouldn't be there, for in his room at home, he could see no window when he was lying on his left side. His pulse quickened as he suddenly realized the bed in which he'd slept was not his own. Every muscle in his body ached, not just from the cold-which seemed to penetrate deeper within his very bones with each passing second, but from an unaccustomed stiffness, as well. Joey sat up, and the animal hide with which he had been covered fell away, leaving him shivering as the cold wind from the window struck his naked chest.

Where was he?

Why wasn't he at home?

He tried to remember what had happened last night. It began to come back to him in bits and pieces.

The feeling had come over him last night.

The terrible nervous feeling.

The urge to run out into the night.

The voice he'd heard calling out to him, whispering his name.

He'd tried to shut it out. But the harder he tried not to hear it, the more persistent the voice became.

He'd started wondering if this time he was actually going to go crazy, and that thought had scared him even more than the terrifying things happening to his mind and his body.

What if it never went away this time?

What if he had to spend the rest of his life feeling like this?

They'd lock him up. They'd put him in a hospital with all the crazy people, and never let him out again.

His emotions had fed on each other then, and he could feel himself sinking into a dark pit with a monster waiting for him at the bottom-a terrifying monster, which would suddenly attack him, coming out of nowhere, twisting its tentacles around him like a choldng vine from which there would be no escape.

Finally the whole turmoil in his mind had congealed into rage, and he yelled at Aunt MaryAnne when she came looking for him.

No! He hadn't yelled at Aunt MaryAnne at all. It had been Alison who had come to his room, not Aunt MaryAnne!

His memory was getting fuzzy again, and he had to struggle to remember it all. Alison had come to his room.

Why? And why had he been so mad at her?

He tried to remember what she'd said to him, but his mind failed him.

But he did remember lying on the bed, staring at her, hating her...

Hating Alison?

But that was crazy! He didn't hate Alison. He liked her.

In fact, he liked her more than anyone he'd ever met. Yesterday morning, when she'd taken his hand, he felt wonder ful, as if no matter what anyone said about him or how they treated him, it would be all right as long as Alison was next to him, holding his hand.

And then last night he'd said things to her-terrible things-things about her mother, and even about her.

Snatches of it came back to him now.

... wish you'd go away ... wish you'd all go away ...

hate . . . -all of you!

He'd gotten off the bed, and he'd Oh, Jesus! He'd attacked Alison!

Except he hadn't! Not really! He wouldn't have!

But as he sat on the hard bed in the icy room, he knew that he had. He'd ran at her at her, to put his hands around her neck and squeeze.

And keep squeezing.

But why? She hadn't done anything to him! She'd just been trying to talk to him, to find out what was wrong, to help him!

And he'd tried to kill her!

But she'd gotten away from him! He shoved her, and she fell against the wall, and All he remembered was a terrible searing pain, and then he'd been outside, running. Storm had been with him, and it had been very dark, and yet despite the blackness of the night, he'd been able to see.

See almost as clearly as if it was daytime.

Yet his memory after he'd left the house was nothing more than flickering images, images he could barely grasp before they flitted away again, skittering out of his reach before he could quite examine them.

Where was he? Wrapping the animal skin around himself, he went to the open door and peered out. He frowned.

The clearing looked familiar, and when he finally went outside and turned to look at the crumbling cabin in which he'd passed the night, he had the certain feeling that he'd been here before.

When?

He went back into the cabin, his mind puzzling at the question, and suddenly he knew.

Day before yesterday.

Tuesday afternoon, when he had gone up to Coyote Creek Campground with Alison and Logan. Storm had smelled something, and gone off after it, and he followed.

It hadn't seemed like they'd been gone very long, but when he got home it was a lot later than he thought it should have been.

Was this where he'd come? He gazed curiously around the cabin, stared at the single chair that stood next to a rough-surfaced table made of curling pine planks. There was an ancient cast-iron stove with a large kettle on it, a counter on which there were some badly chipped plates and mugs, and a few worn-looking clothes hanging from rusty nails hammered into the walls. So someone lived here, even if there wasn't any glass in the windows and the door barely shut. He looked at the windows once again, and discovered that there were shutters on the outside, shutters that could be pulled closed, and bolted. Once he'd secured them, he went to the stove, found the remnants of a barely smoldering fire, and added three pieces of wood to it from the box against the wall.

Under the counter, there was a lantern, an old kerosene one, but its wick was trimmed and its chimney clean. Yet if someone lived here, where was he?

And where was Storm?

He went to the door once more, whistled, and a moment later Storm appeared, slinking out of the underbrush, only to stop when he was still ten yards away from the cabin, dropping nervously to his haunches.

Joey frowned at the dog's behavior, then called out to him. "Come on, Storm! It's okay, boy!" The dog didn't move, but only whiinpered anxiously. "Storm, come!" Joey commanded.

Still the dog didn't move from where he sat, but his body stiffened and he began quivering with nervousness. Scowling at the shepherd, Joey turned away, went back into the cabin, and set about searching for his clothes.

He finally found them, piled in the corner of the cabin's single room, and picked them up.

A strange, sharp odor filled his nose, and he carried the clothing to the bed, puzzled. Only when he shook them out did he understand.

Everywhere, dark stains covered his clothes.

Bloodstains.

Still wet, still sticky.

Where had they come from?

Had he done something? Something he couldn't even remember? -He must have! If he hadn't, why were his clothes stained? Seizing them, he hurried to the stove where the wood he'd added had begun to sprout flames, and stuffed the clothing inside, slamming the door shut as soon as the bloodied material began to singe.

Terrified by the thoughts that now swirled through his mind, his eyes darted frantically around the cabin like those of a trapped animal. He had to get out! Get out now!

Shoving his bare feet into the pair of shoes that sat on the floor next to the bed, but with nothing to protect him from the cold of the morning except the animal skin beneadi which he'd slept, he fled out the front door, Storm finally leaving his post to dash after him as he started down the trail. The horrible knowledge of what he must have done during the night building in his mind, yet having no clear memory at all of actually having done it, Joey charged down the Mountainside, slipping and sliding on the stony trail, one hand holding the fur blanket around his naked shoulders as he used the other one to steady himself when he lost his footing. As he came into the forest and the path leveled out, he slowed. The cabin was now well out of sight. But what if someone found him up here? He left the trail, moving off into the shelter of the woods, then paralleled it, keeping his tread light.

He had gone perhaps a mile when he sensed something up ahead. He paused, listening, but heard nothing. Yet when he sniffed at the air, there was a trace of a scent.

A familiar scent.

Then he recognized it. The barely perceptible odor in the air was the same one he had whiffed back in the cabin, when he'd picked up his wadded clothes.

The scent of blood.

Now that same pungent sharpness was filling his nostrils again.

He began moving through the woods once more, careful to keep his tread absolutely silent. Storm, sensing his master's sudden fear, pressed close to him, his hackles rising.

Joey moved from tree to tree, the scent growing ever stronger. Finally, leaving the shelter of a large white-barked pine, he scuttled over to a clump of underbrush, dropped the animal skin that was his only protection from the chill air, and lay down on his belly to begin crawling forward through the shrubbery, toward the source of the coppery odor that lay just beyond. He worked his way through the tangle of vegetation, moving slowly, Storm at his side. At last he paused. Through a small gap in the leaves, he could make out the figure of a man seated on the ground, his back against a tree. A shotgun lay across his lap, and his head was tipped forward on his chest as he dozed. The head jerked as the man came suddenly awake, and Joey froze.

Had the man heard him?

But no-the man was simply struggling to stay awake, the way he himself sometimes did in the classroom, especially on the mornings after those nights when the nervousness had seized him and he'd been unable to sleep.

The man stood up, and now Joey recognized him.

Tony Moleno, his uniform rumpled from his night in the woods, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep. He stretched, then moved away from the tree, and as Joey's eyes followed the deputy's movements, he saw the source of the pungent odor that had caught his attention a few minutes before.

His eyes widened as he gazed at the body that still lay on the ground.

The body that Tony Moleno must have been guarding all night long, just as he had guarded the body of Glen Foster only two nights earlier.

Suddenly Joey was glad there had been nothing left to see when he and Alison and Logan had gone up to the campground the other day, for now, from his vantage point in the underbrush, he could stare right into Bill Sikes's face.

Stare at his dead eyes.

Stare at the gaping wound from which his blood must have poured.

Another image flickered in his head.

An image of the stains on his clothes came suddenly into his mind, as his eyes fastened on Sikes's face, and he imagined blood spewing from the great tear in his neck.

The two images fused in Joey's mind as his heart pounded heavily.

Could he have done this?

Was it possible?

Barely able to suppress the cry that rose in his throat, he began wriggling away, threading feet first back the way he'd come, until at last he was free from the underbrush.

Shivering, his teeth chattering not only from the cold, but from the memory of what he'd seen-and the terror at what he might have done-he wrapped himself in the bearskin, clutching it tightly around his body.

A sob threatening to cut off his breathing completely, he stumbled on down the mountain, the trail now forgotten.

All he could think of-the single imperative that filled his soul and drove him onward-was his need to flee.

But even as he fled down the Mountainside, he knew that no matter how far he ran, or where he finally went, the image of Bill Sikes's dead face-his vacant eyes staring straight at him, accusing him-would never leave him.

That image was burned in his mind forever, etched so deeply it would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would never be able to wipe it away.

Except, he realized, there was a way to erase that image from his consciousness, a way to escape not only from the vision of the dead man, but from the terror of the times when the nervousness came on him, making him want to flee.

There was a way, he realized, that he could escape it all.

Now he formed another image in his head.

An image of the cliff from which his mother had plunged less than two weeks ago.

But could he actually do it? Could he bring himself to stand at the top of the cliff, look down, and jump?