999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [113]
I dropped it immediately. “Don’t be alarmed,” I said as gently as I could. “I mean you no harm.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “On the contrary.”
I could only see the right side of her face, which was heart-shaped and strong-featured. She had long dark hair that swirled about her like the currents of a very deep pool. She had on a pink shantung silk blouse and moss-green trousers of the same material. Her feet were bare and I saw tattooed on the instep of one a crescent moon and a circle.
“Are you all right?” I asked again.
“Bring a candle over,” she said. When I had complied and had lighted it for her, she took another look at me. “William, it is you.”
“Do I know you?”
“My name is Daleth,” she said. “I am the door, the moist leaf that protects and provides.”
“What happened here?”
She rose up and turned her full face to me. I recoiled with a small cry I could not help but utter. The entire left side of her face was a raw pulp, newly burned by naked flame.
“My God,” I whispered. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
“You found your way here, William,” she said as I helped her up. “I wanted to meet you, to guide you here, but—” She collapsed against me and her head lolled on my chest without leaving an imprint of blood.
I helped her to the divan and arranged her on it. Her breathing was heavy, as tortured as the ticking of the old clock downstairs.
“It has come,” she said. “The beast is already here, you see. It has violated the rules, which means that you must have done the same.”
I immediately thought of my willfully changing the course of the hunt in the Charnwood Forest over Gimel’s warning.
“I suppose I have,” I said. “But I had no idea of the consequences.”
“No,” she said. “But that’s just it, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“All life has consequence, William. All life has value.”
“Not this beast. It’s already killed two people, and now look what it’s done to you.”
She regarded me from out of pitch-black eyes. “The beast—it’s still here. Somewhere. Waiting to come into the light.”
I retrieved the carving knife and hefted it. “This time I’m ready.”
“What will you do?” she asked. “Pierce its skull as you did with the crocodile?”
I started. “How did you know about that?”
“How did I know your name?”
I stood up, shaking. “Who are you? Who are any of you?”
“I told you. My name is Daleth.”
“You’re termagants,” I cried, “sent to torture me!”
She drew herself up. “Are you so undeserving of torture?” I was too stunned to answer. Possibly she never meant me to answer, because almost immediately she went on. “If so, then why do you torture yourself?”
“What … what do you mean?” I said hoarsely.
“Oh, you know perfectly well what I mean, William, sitting day after day in that bar, hiding yourself away from the world, losing your soul in that bottomless pit inside yourself.”
“Hey!” I shouted. Now I truly was terrified. I’d told no one about that bottomless pit, not Donnatella, not Mike the bartender, not Ray my accountant. No one. “What in the name of holy hell is going on here?”
That was when she cocked her head and her black eyes opened wide. “You hear it, don’t you, William?” The sound she was referring to came again, echoing eerily in the bowels of the house. “The beast is on the move again. It is coming out of the shadows.”
“Fuck the beast.”
“Yes"—she nodded—“fuck the beast, indeed.” She cocked her head. “On the other hand, you cannot ignore it. And you can no longer run away. This is your last chance. Here is where you make your stand.”
I could hear it now, and somehow the sound of its movements sent fresh shock waves of terror running through me.
“Tell me what the others didn’t,” I said. “Tell me how to kill it.”
She looked up at me with something akin to astonishment. “It cannot be killed. I thought you knew that much.”
“Damn you!” I cried. “Damn all