A whisper, unidentifiable but familiar, broke the silence.
There was an out-of-place silhouette on the floor and Leila released a deep breath that became a gasp. She also released her grip on several of the metal gourds, but as her eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, she relaxed ever so slightly. The shadowy figure on the floor was her son.
Were you listening to the music, too?
“You should be asleep,” she whispered, some part of her brain wondering why her mother hadn’t stirred at the sound of the gourds clattering to the floor.
As usual, the boy said nothing.
“Go on,” she said, gesturing toward his sleeping pallet. “It’s very late.”
The boy replied with a wet gurgle and for an instant—only for an instant—six eyes, not two, reflected the moonlight that angled in through a solitary window. She neither felt nor heard the rest of the cans dropping to the ground around her feet.
A moan escaped Leila, and as she fumbled to light a candle her mind tried to comprehend what she was seeing—or thought she was seeing: two dark shapes backing away from behind where the boy sat, retreating from the sudden spark of light.
The candle’s flame held steady, then shifted, first to the left then to the right as breezes passed her on either side, foul-smelling and throwing impossible shadows onto the walls.
The cave. The shadows moving toward Serebur?.
No!
Then the room was still.
“NOOOOO!!!” Leila cried, rushing to embrace her son, who folded into her arms like a doll.
She pulled back.
The boy’s eyes were vacant, unfocused. Then his head flopped over to one side, with a sudden crack.
Leila extended an unsteady arm and the candle threw sputtering light onto the woven pallet where her mother lay motionless in a widening puddle of—
An instant later, Leila heard the sound of someone screaming. At first, she was startled that a person could create such a bone-chilling cry. She was not quite aware, yet, that the screams were her own.
CHAPTER 16
Stolen Food, Stolen Dreams
A conflagration will come upon the earth . . . and plagues . . . And their error: that they acted against themselves, this human race.
—EGYPTIAN REVELATION OF SETH (APPROXIMATELY FIRST CENTURY B.C.)
January 28, 1944
Six beams of light probed the edges of a steep trail leading away from Nostromo Base. Colonel Wolff had decided to investigate the screams coming from the hill for himself, and, while the horrible sounds had instantly put everyone in the camp on alert (and on edge), the colonel found that his overriding emotion was inquisitiveness. What could cause someone to scream like that—and for so long?
He also perceived that Sergeant Schr?dinger and the four soldiers accompanying him were anything but inquisitive as they followed the shrieks to their source—a small hut.
How had my sentries not noticed this place before? he thought, as they approached the structure. His flashlight beam paused at a pile of empty cans. And what else have they missed?
The colonel gnashed his teeth. Too many mistakes.
Wolff noted that one of the men with him was the corporal who had been on the deck of the Nostromo that morning. Now this same man had been ordered out of the camp and into the dark forest where an unknown killer lurked, a killer he might actually have seen. Wolff allowed himself a small measure of satisfaction. Corporal Kessler is having a difficult day.
They stopped just outside the simple dwelling, the cries from within having now settled into a prolonged moan.
At Wolff’s signal, three of the unnerved soldiers rushed in, flashlights secured to their MP-43s, which they each held at waist level. Wolff entered next, with Schr?dinger backing in behind him, his flashlight scanning the borders of the tiny clearing that surrounded the hut.
For several moments the Germans played their lights around the interior of the circular room, each attempting to understand the scene before him. They had all seen their share of horrors, and to varying degrees they had become numb to all manner of human mistreatment. But none of them had ever seen anything quite like this: a young woman, hysterical and clutching a pale, catatonic child . . . an older woman seemingly asleep in a pool of her own blood, too much blood for her to possibly be alive. Then there was the smell, the horribly incongruent smell.
Wolff gestured toward the withered figure of the old woman. “This one will be autopsied.”