THIRTEEN
***
The lights from the high school stadium, which were a royal pain if you lived anywhere in a two-mile radius of the place and wanted to get a little sleep, were now the main source of illumination in Rising's dark streets. Jason used the light to carefully throw a pile of files on the seat of his truck, then looked at Hatty, who was getting ready to call it a night as well.
"Late night," said Jason, nodding at the football lights.
"Cheerleading practice," answered Hatty. Checking her watch, she added, "Should be through in a few hours." Then she shivered, and Jason could tell that she was still rattled from their experience at Doc Peabody's.
"You going to be all right?" he asked.
"What's going on here, Sheriff?" she asked by way of an answer.
"I don't know," said Jason truthfully. Then he glanced at the numerous files on his seat. "But I'm going to find out."
Hatty got in her car. "I hope you do, Sheriff. But any answer you find...I doubt you'll get it from your case files."
Jason didn't want to share with her his own silent conviction of the same idea as true, so instead said merely, "We do what we can."
Hatty nodded and drove off. Once she was gone, he looked at the files again and sighed, allowing the hopelessness he felt to show for a brief moment. Then he got in his truck and made the short drive to his home.
His house was one of the small places just outside of Rising, at the base of the mountains that always loomed over the town. His back yard consisted of forest that went as far as he could see and beyond: government land that, as far as he could tell, was never going to be developed beyond carving out a dirt road or two for the convenience of the Bureau of Land Management surveyors that came out his way every three or four months to map some portion of the area before returning to whatever government office had spawned them in the first place.
He pulled into his garage, closing the door behind him, and then went into his house.
His house was nothing special, just a basic place that he had purchased when he moved back to Rising. A few bedrooms, one and a half baths, an office, a den. More than what he needed for himself, but not so big that it felt like he should have his family living there, thank God.
Jason threw the files he had brought with him from the station onto a TV tray that sat by a recliner, and sat down. Soon he had the files open all over his lap, trying to find something in them that might lend a clue about what was happening in his town. He took notes as he worked, and every once in a while checked the notes to make sure that they still were what he had written, and hadn't changed into childish scrawl of nonsense words.
Harappan. Hoer-Verde.
His thoughts kept drifting to the words, and more and more it felt like they were some kind of a message. But what kind of message he could not even guess at.
Jason sipped a cola, rubbed his eyes...and froze.
A shadowed form stood in the hallway. The person was cloaked in darkness; no features could be seen.
But it was a child.
"Aaron?" Jason whispered, then shook his head. Not Aaron, it couldn't be his son, Aaron was dead and buried and gone forever. "Sean?" he said louder. "Sean Rand?"
The figure didn't move, either to flee or to approach and walk into the pale ring of light that Jason's reading lamp cast. Jason gulped dryly, hoping against hope that this could somehow be the missing boy; could be the thing that Rising needed to set it right again.
"Sean?" he said again, and began slowly moving files off his lap so he could move quickly.
The figure moved, walking - still utterly hidden - into the kitchen.
"Hey, wait," Jason shouted, and quickly followed. But by the time he got to the kitchen it was empty, the side door that led outside swinging shut with a low thud. He ran out after the child, and found himself in forest in only a few feet. His house was on the outskirts of town, well apart from any neighbors. The mist that was still making inroads on the town below had arrived here in full force, laying on the ground like an impenetrable blanket, writhing around his feet and legs like some alien being trying to slowly make its way to his face, where it could suffocate and eat him.
The town looked darker than usual from his vantage point, though the football lights that attested to continuing cheerleading practice were easily visible, like banners above the mists.
"Sean!" shouted Jason.
A twig snapped in the trees, and he barreled off in that direction, only registering in the tiniest part of his mind that he had no gun; that he had left his service pistol behind in the house. He ran into the forest unthinkingly, his only thought the idea that if he could save Sean, even at this late period, that he could save the town, could reverse whatever strangeness had come to the sleepy town and make everything as it once was.
In the forest, the mist clung to the trees like a disease, rolling in thicker and thicker all the time. Soon, Jason could barely see one tree from the next. All was shadow and dim white mist. Shadows flitted all around him, moving at the corners of his vision, disorienting him constantly. He felt like he was in the middle of a ghosts' ball, the only living - and therefore uninvited - person to stumble onto the place of their partying.
"Sean!" he cried again, and spun around, feeling disorientation rise up within him and begin to take control of his normally tightly reined feelings. He couldn't see anything now. Not the football field, not Rising, not his own house, not even a single damned tree.
Then there was a flash of black in the corner of his vision. Jason swiveled to face it; followed it. The shape flitted ahead of him, always moving, always just ahead, like the lingering edges of a nightmare better left forgotten.
Then, at last, the shadow stopped. Jason caught up to it.
And felt himself begin to breathe again, though he was not aware of the exact moment he had stopped.
It was Sean!
The little boy stood in bright blue pajamas, slump-shouldered, his back to Jason so that his face was not visible. That was disturbing, but Jason pushed away any negative feelings. Here was the boy that could put things back together at Rising, he felt sure of it.
"Sean?" he said again. "It's just me. Sheriff Meeks."
He reached out to touch the boy. The figure shrunk away from his fingers, keeping its back turned at the same time.
"Don't," said Sean.
Jason's hand stopped in midmotion. A long, eerie moment passed.
Then the boy spoke again. This time, however, his voice was different. Bubbling. Like he was speaking the words through a throat that had been viciously torn out.
Like he was speaking words around blood.
"It got me," said the boy.
"What got you?"
Another long moment. Then: "It got me."
"Let me help you," pleaded Jason.
"You can't. No one can."
And the boy began to turn....
"Because it's started," he said, and completed his turn. "Fear."
Jason screamed. The face had been torn and destroyed by something out of this world, something for which he had no name. He was taken by a primal panic, a fear that went back to the days when people huddled in caves during thunderstorms and prayed for the gods to stop throwing fire at them. He stumbled backward, seized by an irresistible need to flee, to escape, to fly away from this place and this horrible specter that confronted him.
Then he tripped, his boots slipping in the thick mud, and when he looked up, the boy was gone.
Now, instead of Sean, a woman and a young boy stood in front of him.
"Oh, God, please, no," he whispered.
It was Elizabeth and Aaron, dressed as they were in the picture on his desk; as they had been dressed on that day, that fateful and horrible day of days when everything changed.
Jason looked around, and saw that the forest was gone; disappeared. In its place, he was now standing on a city street. One that seemed familiar. He heard a tinkling laugh, and turned in time to see....
His wife and son were disappearing around a nearby corner, laughing and practically dancing with joy as they ran from him. "Hide from Daddy!"
They turned the corner. "NO!" screamed Jason, a shout that came from deep in his gut and took every ounce of his strength and converted it to sound. "NO!" But neither of his loved ones heard. He ran after them.
And as it always did, time...
...slowed...
...down.
He couldn't get there fast enough.
A black crayon rolled out of a blacker alley. Black from black, evil from evil.
Two shots rang out...
And Jason jerked awake with a scream!
He looked around.
He was back in his house. Still in his recliner chair, files still spread out over his lap.
The TV was on, but there was no reception; only snow played on the tube. Jason rubbed at his eyes. He must have fallen asleep for a moment.
He had fallen asleep - had had The Dream - while working on the files that pertained to Sean's disappearance, so small wonder he had jumped right into a dream like the one he had had.
Then he froze as he realized something. His hands. They were not the clean hands of a fastidious county Sheriff.
They were dirty. Grubby. Mud under the nails. As though he had fallen down.
He looked at his pants. The knees were stained with mud as well.
Then the case files on his lap drew his attention. On top of them was a now familiar piece of white paper. Black crayon writing in thick letters. This time, however, there was no cryptic message about a crack in a dam or about being next. The message was short, and to the point.
iT'S sTarTED
***