Bad Men

Jea

But the relief was only temporary. It pained Carl to see the deterioration in his brother. He stopped working, started drinking more, and began talking gibberish about the woods. That was what frightened Carl most, the stuff about the forest. His brother was spending more and more time in the woods. He liked to hunt deer, and before the cull in ’99, the island had been nearly overrun with them. Nobody objected much to folks shooting them and filling up their freezers with the meat, although there was no way that Ron and Carl had a freezer big enough for all the dead meat Ron had created in the woods. But Ron wasn’t even hunting anymore. He would just head out into the woods with a couple of six-packs or a bottle of sour mash, and when he returned he would be carrying on conversations that had clearly begun a long time before, and were the continuation of some ongoing argument.

“No, I tell you, I ain’t done it. It weren’t my fault. No, no, no. You got to let me be now, y’hear?”

He also stopped shaving and combing his hair, because doing those things meant looking in mirrors, and Ron didn’t like looking in mirrors anymore, because Ron’s reflection wasn’t the only one he saw when he looked in the glass.

On the night that Ron died, Carl had left him to go meet up with some people down at the Rudder. Ron had seemed pretty lucid, clearer at least than he had been in months.

“Hey, little brother,” he said as Carl headed for the door. His brother was sitting slumped in an easy chair, staring at the fire. “I been thinking. I forced you to do a bad thing that night with the woman. I shouldn’t have made you get involved.”

“You’re my brother,” said Carl. “I’d do anything for you.”

“They’re go

“Who? Who’s going to make you pay?”

But Ron didn’t seem to hear him.

“But I figure that if I pay, maybe that’ll be enough. Maybe they won’t want no more. Maybe they’ll leave you be.”

But when Carl tried to get more out of him, Ron had drifted off into a boozy sleep.

He remembered sitting at a table in the Rudder, not drinking much because he was so disturbed by his brother’s words. He heard the sound of the approaching chopper, then someone came in and said that Snowman, that cop with the dumb name, had been shot, and that-

And then the guy had looked at Carl, and Carl had known.

They said later that his brother had been shooting at the houses nearby, that he was all fired up over some imaginary boundary dispute with his neighbors, but Carl never believed that was true. Ron wasn’t shooting at houses when he died, and the boundaries of which he spoke had nothing to do with hedges or lawns. He was shooting at the things he imagined were speaking to him in the woods, and it was the transgression of their boundaries that led to his death. It was bullshit, of course. Ron’s mind had just collapsed under the weight of his guilt. But since then Carl had kept well clear of the woods that surrounded his house, sticking to the roads and the main paths. Whatever had tormented his brother might have been all in his head, but Carl recalled an incident a week or two back, shortly after the fourth a

The figure was dressed all in gray, and seemed to shimmer.

“Who are you?” asked Carl, as he drew closer.

And then the figure had exploded, shards of it spreading in all directions, into the trees, into the sky, along the ground.

And toward Carl.

Carl turned his face away and shielded himself with one arm. He felt things striking him, felt them moving as they did so. When at last he lowered his arm, there was nothing before him but darkness and trees, but something was caught in the folds of his coat. It fluttered and beat against him, until he released it and allowed it to fly free.

It was a moth, a gray moth. Somehow, Carl had managed to disturb a whole bunch of them in the trees. That was the only excuse he could find, even as he backed toward his truck and recalled the shape that they had somehow formed: the shape of a woman.

That was all beside the point. Joe Dupree, the freak cop, had killed Carl’s brother, and now there would be payback for what he had done. For the chance of revenge, Carl was prepared to risk a trip into the woods. After all, he would not be going in alone.

Carl looked at his watch, hissed in irritation, and returned to the engine of his truck.

The first boat, piloted by Scarfe, came in sight of Cray Cove shortly before nine. They could barely see the island through the wall of snow, but Scarfe knew what he was doing. Without him, they would have run aground on rocks and drowned before they even came within sight of land.

Despite the weather, Scarfe had enjoyed being in command of a boat again. Being on the sea was one of the things he had missed most while locked up. Scarfe’s father knew about boats, and had passed on that knowledge to his son. As soon as the diesel engine began to turn over, and the vibrations commenced beneath his feet, Scarfe was at home. Under other circumstances, he would have cranked the boat faster as soon as they were out on the bay. Instead, he throttled down and kept a steady pace across the water in the face of the wind, until at last they came to the jetty. Powell tied the boat up, and, with a hint of regret, Scarfe cut the engine. He looked out on the silhouette of the island, barely visible through the falling flakes, and thought again that it was strange to see an outer island so thickly forested. Most of them boasted little more than sawgrass and burdock, but Sanctuary was different. Sanctuary had always been different.

The snow, thought Moloch, was a mixed blessing: the weather would keep other people indoors, and permit them to move about with greater ease, but there was now the risk of some of them getting separated and lost. And if anyone did spot them, they would have a hard time explaining why they were wandering around in a near blizzard.

Yet as soon as he set foot on the island, Moloch’s fears seemed to dissipate. Images flashed through his mind, pictures from his dreams and other, less familiar thoughts. He saw trails hidden from the eyes of others. He recalled the names of trees and plants. A great wave of understanding broke upon him.

I know this place.

I know it.

Moloch gestured to Dexter, Powell, Shepherd, and Scarfe, inviting them to follow him. Tell said nothing. Willard just watched them quietly.

“You stay here for now,” Moloch told Tell and Willard. “Watch the boat. When we get back, we’ll need to leave fast.”

Then they moved away, slowly fading into the gathering whiteness.