The groundmist began to swirl around him, first covering his shoes, then his shins, finally enclosing him in a glowing white capsule. It seemed to him that the light was brighter, a pulsing effulgence like the beat of some strange heart. He had never before felt so strongly the presence of nature as a kind of coalescing force, a real being... possibly sentient. The swamp was alive, but not with the sound of music. If asked to define either the sense or the nature of that aliveness, he would have been unable. He only knew that it was rich with possibility and textured with strength. Inside it, Louis felt very small and very mortal.
Then there was a sound, and he remembered this from the last time as well: a high, gobbling laugh that became a sob. There was silence for a moment and then the laugh came again, this time rising to a maniacal shriek that froze Louis's blood. The mist drifted dreamily around him. The laughter faded, leaving only the drone of the wind, heard but no longer felt. Of course not; this had to be some sort of geological cup in the earth. If the wind could have penetrated here, it would have torn this mist to tatters... and Louis wasn't sure he would want to see what might have been revealed.
You may hear sounds like voices, but they are the loons down south toward Prospect. The sound carries. It's funny.
"Loons," Louis said and barely recognized the cracked, somehow ghastly sound of his own voice. But he sounded amused. God help him, he actually sounded amused.
He hesitated briefly and then moved on again. As if to punish him for his brief pause, his foot slipped from the next tussock, and he almost lost his shoe, pulling it free from the grasping ooze under the shallow water.
The voice-if that was what it was-came again, this time from the left. Moments later it came from behind him... from directly behind him, it seemed, as if he could have turned and seen some blood-drenched thing less than a foot from his back, all bared teeth and glittering eyes... but this time Louis did not slow. He looked straight ahead and kept walking.
Suddenly the mist lost its light and Louis realized that a face was hanging in the air ahead of him, leering and gibbering. Its eyes, tilted up like the eyes in a classical Chinese painting, were a rich yellowish-gray, sunken, gleaming.
The mouth was drawn down in a rictus; the lower lip was turned inside out, revealing teeth stained blackish-brown and worn down almost to nubs. But what struck Louis were the ears, which were not ears at all but curving horns...
they were not like devil's horns; they were ram's horns.
This grisly, floating head seemed to be speaking-laughing. Its mouth moved, although that turned-down lower lip never came back to its natural shape and place. Veins in there pulsed black. Its nostrils flared, as if with breath and life, and blew out white vapors.
As Louis drew closer, the floating head's tongue lolled out. It was long and pointed, dirty yellow in color. It was coated with peeling scales and as Louis watched, one of these flipped up and over like a manhole cover and a white worm oozed out. The tongue's tip skittered lazily on the air somewhere below where its adam's apple should have been... it was laughing.
He clutched Gage closer to him, hugging him, as if to protect him, and his feet faltered and began to slip on the grassy tussocks where they held slim purchase.
You might see St. Elmo's fire, what the sailors call foo-lights. It can make funny shapes, but it's nothing. If you should see some of those shapes and they bother you, just look the other way.
Jud's voice in his head gave him a measure of resolve. He began to move steadily forward again, lurching at first, then finding his balance. He didn't look away but noticed that the face-if that was what it was and not just a shape made by the mist and his own mind-seemed to always remain the same distance away from him. And seconds or minutes later, it simply dissolved into drifting mist.
That was not St. Elmo's fire.
No, of course it wasn't. This place was thick with spirits; it was tenebrous with them. You could look around and see something that would send you raving mad. He would not think about it. There was no need to think about it. There was no need to-Something was coming.
Louis came to a total halt, listening to that sound... that inexorable, approaching sound. His mouth fell open, every tendon that held his jaw shut simply giving up.
It was a sound like nothing he had ever heard in his life-a living sound, a big sound. Somewhere nearby, growing closer, branches were snapping off. There was a crackle of underbrush breaking under unimaginable feet. The jellylike ground under Louis's feet began to shake in sympathetic vibration. He became aware that he was moaning (oh my God oh my dear God what is that what is coming through this fog?) and once more clutching Gage to his chest; he became aware that the peepers and frogs had fallen silent, he became aware that the wet, damp air had taken on an eldritch, sickening smell like warm, spoiled pork.
Whatever it was, it was huge.
Louis's wondering, terrified face tilted up and up, like a man following the trajectory of a launched rocket. The thing thudded toward him, and there was the ratcheting sound of a tree-not a branch, but a whole tree-falling over somewhere close by.
Louis saw something.