“Then, okay.”
“Thank you,” said Dana. “Really … thank you. I know you don’t think it will help, but I really want you there. Is it too much to ask?”
“Dana … look, you can ask for anything and I’ll do it.” He paused. “And I hope that doesn’t sound corny.”
“No,” said Dana. “It’s nice.”
The house creaked as if shifting in its sleep.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay,” said Ethan. “Sweet dreams.”
It was the sweetest thing he could have said, and she clung to it like a talisman. She took those words to bed with her and lay with them, smiling, there on the edge of sleep. Then she put her hands together and said a quick prayer. She asked for guidance. She asked for protection. As her eyes drifted shut, Dana fell off the edge down into the well of sleep.
CHAPTER 59
The Observation Room
11:57 P.M.
“… The truth is out there. I’m going to find it.”
Agent Gerlach sat beside Danny, watching the Scully girl on the TV monitor. Gerlach reached out and touched the rewind button, stopped it, and then pressed play.
“The truth is out there. I’m going to find it.”
Danny cut him a nervous look.
“Yeah,” said Gerlach, replying to the unspoken question. “That’s going to be a problem for us.”
CHAPTER 60
Scully Residence
April 5, 1:22 A.M.
Dana felt a presence in the room with her, and it pulled her up out of a deep dream in which she stood on a tiny island with a man she did not know, surrounded by mist and darkness. Somewhere out in the darkness, something big and heavy and wrong moved through the waters.
And then she was awake, sitting up all at once, jolted back to the world and the present and the darkness of her room. Lightning flashed outside and revealed a figure standing at the foot of her bed. The shadows of the tree branches outside painted the figure with stark, jagged lines of black and white. Dana recoiled, a scream rising to her lips, but she caught it, held it, kept it inside.
When she spoke, it was a whisper.
“Gran…?”
Her grandmother stood there, dressed in a pale nightdress, gray hair hanging loose, eyes completely black in the bad light.
“The angel is looking for you,” said Gran.
“What?”
“He has all his thoughts bent on you,” said Gran. “His mind is a furnace.”
“Gran, how do you know about that?”
Lightning flashed again and again, but there was no accompanying thunder. The world was oddly silent.
“Listen to me, girl,” said Gran. “There are webs and webs, layers upon layers, and you need to be very careful. Keep looking, but know that the truth is all around you, too. It is there to be seen, to be known. It’s not enough to open your eyes.… You have to turn and look around. The truth might be standing right behind you.”
“I don’t understand.”
There was another flash of lightning, and this time there was a monstrous explosion of thunder that shook the world and made Dana cry out. It was all so loud, so bright, that she turned away from it, covering her head with her arms.
When she looked again, Gran was gone. The room was empty, the door closed and locked. Outside, the storm clouds had thinned and parted, and the moon shone clear and bright through the April trees.
CHAPTER 61
The Observation Room
2:08 A.M.
“Agent Gerlach!” cried Danny, and the fear in the young man’s voice snapped Gerlach from a doze. He jerked awake and launched himself from where he’d been sprawled on a threadbare couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think we’re in trouble.” Danny pointed to one of the screens.
On screen number eleven, a thin olive-skinned girl was thrashing in her bed with such intense ferocity that they could hear mattress springs snapping like loud guitar strings. The whole bed was bouncing, lifting the front and back legs as if strong hands were raising and smashing them back down. Gerlach could hear the pounding of fists and the desperate cries of the girl’s parents, but the dresser slid across the floor and wedged itself immovably against the door. The bedside lamp flashed on and off like a strobe, and steam rose from the screaming girl’s open mouth.
“What’s he doing to her?” demanded Danny.
Gerlach wiped cold sweat from his face. “Turning up the amplification,” he said, echoing the order from the First Elder.
“He’s going to kill her.”
Gerlach said nothing.
Suddenly the girl was flung from the bed with incredible force. She crashed to the floor, twisting like a worm on summer-hot pavement. Then she shot to her feet, crouched for a moment like a wild animal, eyes mad and feral as she looked around, clearly seeing nothing she recognized. Then, with a howl like a wild dog, the girl ran toward the window, crashed through the curtains and glass, and vanished into the night. After an appalling moment, there was the soft, awful noise of her body striking the unforgiving lawn two stories below.