Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [147]
Then George struck him across the face with his hand, and without thinking twice, Jared struck him back. He caught George flush on the nose, and blood spurted out. George released him and stumbled back in surprise, both hands going to his face. In that instant, something raw surged through Jared Scott. He remembered the way Old Bob Freemark had walked up to Danny Abbott and his friends and confronted them. He remembered the set of the old man’s shoulders and the determination in his eyes.
“You get out of here!” he shouted at George, bracing himself in a fighter’s stance, raising his fists threateningly. “This isn’t your home! It’s mine and my brothers’ and my sisters’ and my mom’s!”
For a moment George Paulsen just stood there, blood running down his mouth and chin, shock registering on his face. Then a wild look came into his eyes, and he threw himself on Jared, catching him by the throat and bearing him to the floor. Jared twisted and squirmed, trying to get away, but George held him down, screaming obscenities. George rose over him and began to hit him with his fists, striking him in the face with solid, vicious blows that rocked his head and brought bright lights to his eyes. He tried to cover up, but George just knocked his hands aside and kept hitting him. Then dark shapes swarmed out of the shadows, things Jared had never seen before, eyes cat-bright and wild. They fell on George with the raw hunger of predators, their supple, invasive limbs twisting about him, ensnaring him, molding to his body. Their presence seemed to drive George to an even greater frenzy. The blows quickened, and Jared’s defenses began to collapse. His mother began screaming, begging George to stop. There was the sound of bones snapping, and a warm rush of blood flooded Jared’s mouth and throat.
Then the pain froze him, and all sound and movement ceased, disappearing like a movie’s final scene into slow, hazy blackness.
At the beginning of the roadway leading up under the bridge to the cliffs, Nest asked her grandfather to set her on her feet again. She had stopped crying, and her legs were steady enough to support her. Once righted, she stared out across the river for long moments, collecting herself, trying to blot the memory of what had happened from her mind. Her grandfather stood next to her and waited in silence.
“I’m all right,” she said finally, repeating his words back to him.
They walked up the road side by side, the old man and the girl, no longer touching, saying nothing, eyes lowered to the pavement. They passed under the bridge and came out of the darkness onto the park’s grassy flats. Nest glanced about surreptitiously for the feeders, for their eyes, for some small movement that would signal their presence, but found nothing. She could still feel their hands on her, feel them worming then — way beneath her skin, into her blood and her bones, past all her defenses, deep inside where her fear and rage roiled and they might feed.
She felt violated and ashamed, as if she had been stripped naked and left soiled and debased.
“How did you find me?” she asked, keeping her eyes lowered so he could not see what was reflected there.
“Your friends,” her grandfather replied, not looking at her. “They came to the house, brought me out to look for you.”
She nodded, thinking now of Danny Abbott and the demon, and she was about to say something more when they heard the heavy boom of a shotgun. Her grandfather’s white head lifted. Both stopped where they were, staring out into the darkness. The shotgun fired again. And again. Six times, it roared.
“Evelyn,” Nest heard her grandfather whisper hoarsely.
And then he was running through the park for the house.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Evelyn Freemark walked out onto the big veranda porch and watched Robert and the children disappear around the corner of the house, headed for the park in search of Nest. Even when they were no longer in sight, swallowed