CHAPTER 27

"Wh-Who is he?" Alison stammered, her voice barely audible. Her whole body trembled as she stared at the man lying on the floor, blocking the door to the living room.

MaryAnne opened her mouth, but no sound came from her throat at all.

Her knees felt weak and her heart was still pounding, but slowly she managed to get her breathing back to normal.

She had done it.

She had actually killed a man.

A twinge of nausea wrenched her gut, but she put it down, refusing to give in to it.

He's not a man, she told herself.

Even if he has a name, and it's Shane Slater, he's still not a man, but a monster.

A monster covered with her son's blood.

This was what had killed her son. This creature whose corpse was sprawled on the floor had killed her little boy.

She understood it all now.

It was this man whom Logan must have seen.

How long had he been out there, creeping around the house under the cover of the blizzard?

Was this the first time he'd come?

But she knew better than that.

It was this-diing that had terrified the horses in the barn and set Bill Sikes to prowling in the dark, searching for the source of their fear.

She shuddered now as she thought of how often he must have been out in the yard, concealed in the darkness of the night, peering in through the windows, watching them.

Spying on them.

Had they ever been safe from those eyes as they sat in the den or the kitchen?

And what had he been looking for?

But she knew why he was there, for as she gazed at him now, she was absolutely certain who he was.

The man whose picture she'd found in Audrey's photo album only that morning.

And now that she could see him in the flesh, even through the distortions of both his life and his death, she recognized the resemblance to Joey Wilkenson.

The same strong brow line, the same firm jaw.

The ears set close to the head, though Shane Slater's were large-unnaturally large.

She knew why he'd come. He was watching Joey.

Watching his son.

But what had he wanted tonight?

Had he come to kill them and take Joey away with him?

Or had it been something else, something she could never even guess at?

She took a step toward him and stared once more into his twisted face, his open eyes seeming to be fixed on her as if he were still alive.

Insane!

He looked insane, and she knew he had to be to have stayed up in the mountains year after year, keeping himself alive while he watched his child grow up as the son of another man.

At last she found her voice. "He's the man from the cabin," she replied to Alison's question, her voice sounding loud in the hollow silence that had fallen over the house now that the wind had died away. Should she tell Alison he was also Joey's father?

No.

At least not now.

"They must have chased him down," she said, not answering Alison's question. With an effort, MaryAnne forced herself to relax her grip on the shotgun, her clenched fingers sore from the force she had been exerting on the hard rubber of its stock. "We have to get him out of here."

Alison's eyes widened with fear and she said nothing, her mouth going dry as she thought of actually touching the horrible bleeding thing on the floor.

MaryAnne leaned the shotgun against the stone chimney and took a tentative step toward Shane Slater's hulking form, then stopped.

What if he wasn't dead?

Her eyes darted around the room, searching for some weapon other than the empty shotgun, and finally fell on the fireplace poker, a heavy black wrought-iron rod whose end bent at a right angle, the tip of which had been forged into a sharp point. Her hand trembling, she reached out and took it from the hook below the heavy mantelpiece. "Help me, Alison," she whispered as she started once more toward Slater's prostrate form, her feet heavy, her legs threatening to give way beneath her. "For God's sake- I can't do this by myself!"

"Mommy, !"

"Help me!" MaryAnne said again, her voice rising now, taking on a sharp edge that finally penetrated the fog that had gathered around Alison's mind.

Slowly, forcing herself to take each halting step, Alison moved away from the fireplace and started toward her mother. "Wh-What are we going to do with him?" she breathed.

"We'll take him outside," MaryAnne replied. "We're snowed in, Alison. We can't get out of here until someone comes for us, and we can't stay in here with"-she hesitated, searching for the right word, but nothing came.

with that! You have to help me get him out of here!"

Alison nodded wordlessly, edging toward her mother, staying as far away as she could from the bloody stain that was spreading across the floor. "H-How?" she asked.

"How are we going to move him?"

"We'll have to drag him," MaryAnne replied. "If we each take an"

A

shudder passed through her at the mere thought of actually touching the bloody corpse. But what choice did she have? If she left him there, even covered him up, she would never make it through the long night ahead. When they finally found her, she would be cowering on the floor, gibbering nonsense, her mind no longer functioning at all. Even now, she could feel the edges of her sanity beginning to fray, feel a terrible urge spreading through her to give in to the impulse to scream for help.

Scream, even though no one would hear her.

They were alone completely alone-and outside the snow was still falling, piling higher with every minute that passed.

How long would it be before help could get to them, before they could get away from this terrible place forever?

She didn't know.

All she knew was that unless she got the body of the man who had killed her son out of the house, she would go mad.

"Now!" she told Alison, her voice cracking. "Let's do it, and get it over with!"

She bent down and took one of Shane Slater's wrists. Alison, still not certain she could actually bring herself to touch the ruin of what had once been a man, forced herself to reach tentatively toward the other.

Alison's fingers were still a few inches from Shane Slater's arm when suddenly he raised his hand, his claw@ fingernails closing around her wrist.

Alison screamed as MaryAnne realized her worst fear had just come true-Slater wasn't dead at all. His eyes were wide open now, and as his fingers clamped down, his nails digging into the flesh of Alison's arm, his head turned and his mouth began to work.

Dropping his arm, MaryAnne rose up, fury rising in her as she glared down into the dying face of the man she thought she had already killed.

Alison, immobilized, was staring down into Shane Slater's face, too. His lips worked spasmodically as he struggled to speak. MaryAnne's grip tightened on the poker. She raised it high above her head, its sharp point aimed directly at Shane Slater's forehead.

As the poker began its deadly arc, Shane Slater's words finally formed on his lips.

"I'm ... sorry. . . " he whispered. "Tried to ... save ...

him .

They were the last words he spoke, for even as, he uttered them, MaryAnne brought the poker down with all the force she could muster, plunging the point through his forehead, tearing his brain to shreds.

As his hand fell away from Alison's wrist, the girl looked up at her mother, her face ashen. "Did you hear him?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Did you hear what he said?"

MaryAnne dropped the poker to the floor, saying nothing, but when Alison repeated the dead man's final words, she shook her head.

"He couldn't have said that," she breathed. "He killed Logan, Alison. He killed him! Now let's get him out of here!" Certain he was dead this time, MaryAnne bent down and grasped both of Shane Slater's arms, then dragged him through the living room and dining room.

It wasn't until Alison heard her mother in the kitchen, pulling the table away from the back door, that she finally found the strength to go and help her. But even as the two of them dragged the body outside and across the yard to leave it out of sight behind the barn, Alison kept hearing the man's last words over and over again.

He must have killed Logan! He must have!

But Joey was somewhere outside, too!

Now Shane Slater's words were replaced with the ones she'd heard in school that morning.

I bet Joey did it, she heard Andrea Stiffle saying. He's crazy, and I bet he did it!

What if Andrea was right? What if Joey, not this man, had killed her brother?

A shudder of pure terror went through her, and she knew that the day was not yet done.

Joey Wilkenson came slowly out of the dark reverie into which he'd fallen after the man from the cabin had leaped from the loft into the yard below, disappearing instantly into the howling blizzard. The sound of shotgun blasts echoed in his ears, but as his mind came slowly into focus, he wasn't sure whether they had been real or whether he had only imagined them.

Finally, for the first time, the biting cold of the afternoon began to penetrate his body, and he shivered, then burrowed into the comparative warmth of the thick layer of hay on the loft's floor.

Burrowed like an animal seeking shelter from the elements.

A moment later, though, he heard a faint scream, and then the wind began to die away, and some voice deep inside him whispered to him that something had happened.

Something terrible.

He crept forward once more, but stayed away from the open door to the loft, his instincts telling him to keep himself concealed, Still almost buried in the hay, he pressed his eye to a knothole in one of the barn's heavy planks.

For a moment he saw nothing, but then, as the windblown snow began to settle back to earth, the outline of the house began to take form. As he watched, the back door opened and a figure emerged.

Then there were two figures.

Two figures, backing out of the kitchen, dragging something after them.

A body!

The body of the man who had been in the loft with him, who had spoken to him, who had touched him.

Who had claimed to be his father Could it possibly be true?

Joey didn't know, but as he watched MaryAnne and Alison drag the corpse out into the snowy yard, each of them clinging to one of its arms, he felt a dark rage rising inside him.

They had killed him, shot him as if he'd been no more than an animal in the woods!

As MaryAnne and Alison moved around the corner of the barn, disappearing from his line of vision, Joey slithered free from the hay and moved toward the ladder. A moment later he was back downstairs, slipping silently into the tack room.

There were clothes there-clothes his mother had deemed no longer good enough for school, and had relegated to the barn for him to wear as he went about his chores until either he outgrew them or they wore out.

From

rumaging in a trunk, he found a pair of torn jeans, a stained flannel shirt, and a thick sweater, frayed around the cuffs.

He pulled them on, then shoved his feet into a pair of shoes that were already half a size too small.

Dressed, he left the tack room and moved silently toward the back of the barn, where a small door led to the outside.

He paused inside the door, listening, but heard no sound.

Finally he opened the door a crack and peered out into the pale light of the afternoon.

The body of the mountain man lay in the snow, next to the shed where the tractor was stored.

MaryAnne and Alison had disappeared. Joey could see the tracks they'd left in the snow as they started back to the house.

In the silence of the now gently falling snow, Joey left the shelter of the barn and walked slowly to where Shane Slater lay, then dropped to his knees to look into the mountain man's face.

His father He tried to deny it, tried to tell himself it couldn't possibly be true.

Yet deep inside, he knew it was true, had known it even as the man had spoken the words.

Shane Slater The name was burned into Joey's memory, though he'd only heard it once.

How long had he been up in the mountains?

Had his father been there all his life, watching him?

He had.

Joey knew it, felt it in that hidden place deep inside him where all his most secret feelings had always lain concealed.

Now he knew why he'd never been afraid of the forest never been afraid to wander alone up into the mountains.

His father-his real father@ad been there, too, though Joey had never consciously known it.

Now, too, he knew why he'd never made friends, never fit in with the rest of the kids in Sugarloaf.

He was different!

Something inside him was different from everyone else.

That was why he'd spent so much of his time alone, or with the animals on the ranch.

It wasn't just the way his dad had treated him. It was something inside himself; only the animals had never turned away from him, never acted like there was something wrong with him, never shut him out the way the kids at school had.

And always, for as long as he could remember, the mountains had beckoned to him, calling out to something in his soul, whispering to him that they were the place where he truly belonged.

Now he understood why.

The mountains were where his father was; his real father, who had been there all along, watching over him. As he knelt in the snow, Joey began to remember all the times when he'd stood at the window of his room, feeling the strange, unseen presence reaching out to him, trying to resist the urge to go out into the night.

Now he knew that this man had been there, outside the house, hidden in the dark, so close by that Joey had felt his presence.

He'd been there all along, watching over him, and in the end, when his mother's husband had begun beating him, his father had protected him.

Loved him.

Even now Joey could feel the mountain man's touch on his cheek, feel the love that had warmed him as the man crouched beside him.

The man who had been his father, and whom he'd betrayed.

For today Joey had showed Rick Martin where his father lived, led him up the Mountainside, so they could begin tracking him down.

But his father had forgiven him.

Even after they'd hunted him all day, driven him down from the safety of the mountains, he'd forgiven him.

His father knew he was going to die-had told Joey he was going to die that very day.

But still his father had forgiven him.

Forgiven him, and loved him.

Reaching out to caress Shane Slater's cheek as earlier Slater had caressed his own, Joey Wilkenson opened his mouth, and out of his throat rose an unearthly howl of anguish.

Anguish, and rage.

At long last, Joey had truly become his father's son.

Olivia Sherborne heard the howl rise out of the silence of the falling snow, heard it echo across the valley, no longer muffled by the wind that had driven the blizzard, then suddenly die away.

The same howl she'd heard before, the same inhuman venting of twisted emotions, the same painful wail that had made her blood run cold only a few minutes earlier.

Could it really have been only a few minutes? It felt like hours needless hours-that she'd spent stumbling through the snow, desperately searching for some recognizable landmark.

Now, though, as the windblown snow that had all but blinded her began to settle, something familiar at last emerged from the whiteout.

Twenty yards away stood one of the white-barked pines.

Its twisting branches spread from a gnarled trunk, and its oddly leaflike clumps of needles had trapped great masses of snow, so that it looked as if it were covered with great puffs of cotton.

She recognized the tree-she had seen it every time she came up to the ranch, its unique form always catching her eye as she emerged from the narrow driveway into the large clearing that was dominated by the house.

But this afternoon she was approaching it from a different direction.

Suddenly she understood what had happened.

She had moved north through the woods, instead of west, so instead of paralleling the driveway as it wound up the valley, she had been moving across the valley floor. Still, though she couldn't quite see them yet, she knew the sheds and barn were just beyond the tree.

As was whatever creature had uttered the howl of rage whose echoes still lingered in the valley. Removing her shotgun from her shoulder, Olivia checked the chamber to be certain a cartridge was ready, then started toward the ranch's outbuildings. A surge of new energy ran through her as she realized she was no longer lost, was no longer at risk of dying in the snowstorm. Her shotgun held at the ready, she pushed her way through the snowdrifts, moving as quickly as she could.

Kneeling by his father's corpse, Joey Wilkenson's ears picked up the faint sound of snow crunching under walking feet. His body tensed and he unconsciously sniffed at the air, trying to catch the scent of whatever might be approaching.

A low growl rumbled in his throat, and then he scuttled away, disappearing around the corner of the shed, crouching in the shelter of the little building, all his senses alert as he watched and waited.

The tractor shed was visible now, and Olivia redoubled her efforts, her goal finally clearly in sight for beyond the shed was the barn, and beyond that she could at last make out part of the house itself. Only a few more yards.

She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widening as she saw the pair of feet that stuck out from the corner of the tractor shed.

A pair of feet-bare, their soles thick with calluses, the toes twisted and bent, ending in curving nails that looked almost like claws. Her pulse quickening, Olivia changed course, veering toward the pair of feet, and a moment later found herself staring down at a corpse.

A corpse that was lying in the snow, the great gaping wound in its belly still oozing blood.

Two eyes stared up at her, gazing sightlessly from their sunken sockets.

In the man's forehead was a deep wound, as if someone had driven a spike into his skull, then torn it loose again.

Olivia gazed at the man's face, fear building inside her as the twisted features began to look faintly familiar.

But surely she had never seen this man before-4f she had, she would never have forgotten him, for the face had a feral look to it, a strange mixture of something partly human, partly animal.

Suddenly, a menacing snarl penetrated Olivia's thoughts.

She froze, every muscle in her body tensing, then swung around, raising the shotgun to her shoulder, her left hand gripping its stock, her right forefinger curling around the trigger. A second later Joey Wilkenson sprang at her from the opposite end of the tractor shed, his body smashing into her back with enough force to knock her to the ground.

The shotgun went off, and Olivia felt her right arm rip free from its socket as the weapon kicked back into her shoulder. She screamed at the searing pain that shot out from the dislocated joint, then tried to roll over, tried to free herself from the weight of the creature that had attacked her.

But even as she tried to move, she felt an arm snake around her neck, felt the pressure of it cutting off her breath.

She had to move. Had to do something anything!-to free herself from her attacker.

She struggled, her good arm flailing in the snow, a keening cry of pain and terror rising from her throat, but it was too late, for the pain from her right shoulder was already draining her energy, and her right arm was worse than useless in her attempts to defend herself.

As Joey Wilkenson's teeth sank into the back of her neck, Olivia Sherborne was all but unaware of the new pain that assaulted her body, for her mind had already begun its inevitable withdrawal into the soft, painless darkness of unconsciousness.

When his grisly work was finally done, and he felt Olivia's body lying still beneath him, Joey stood up.

Fresh blood glistened on his sweater, and he wiped more of it from his face with his sleeve.

His breath was coming in panting gasps, but as he stared down at the corpse of the woman he had known all his life, the woman he had just killed, a surge of heat poured through him.

He felt strong and powerful, energized by the kill. His nostrils flared as he sucked in the intoxicating aroma of fresh blood, and he finally understood who and what he was.

Turning away from Olivia Sherborne's corpse, he made his way through the drifting snow to the fence that separated the yard from the field and the forest beyond.

Vaulting the fence in a single graceful motion, he loped toward the forest, his swift stride carrying him easily across the pasture, which the wind had swept nearly clean of snow. Only when he was at the edge of the forest did he stop to look back.

Through the falling snow, the house was just visible, and he gazed at it for a moment, then turned away.

It was no longer his home, would never be his home again.

From now on, his home would be the mountains, where he would live as his father had lived, hiding during the day, concealing himself from the enemies who lived in the valley below, coming out only at night.

Coming out to hunt in the darkness.