Usher's Passing

Six



VALLEY OF THE SHADOW



33



LOGAN BODANE FOLLOWED THE BEAM OF HIS FLASHLIGHT, DEEP INTO the Usher woods.



It had been raining for the past half hour, but now only a fitful mist swirled past the light. The forest held a thick, wet, earthy odor. Raindrops pattered from overhead branches, and the wind stirred restlessly through the treetops.



Logan walked noiselessly along the riding trail, slowly sweeping his light from one side to the other. Soon he was amid the crumpled cages of the ruined zoo, and he continued to the place where the animal carcasses were hung. Most of them had been stripped to the bone by flies and ants, but three new ones - a fox and two squirrels - had been added recently. Beneath them, the blood from their slit throats had formed crusted pools.



The hardest part of it had been climbing the trees to tie the wires around branches so the carcasses would dangle well above the path. Ever since he was a little boy, Logan had been a good hunter. If there was anything in the world that set him apart from other folks, he thought wryly, it was his ability to track animals - in his own very special way.



Logan retreated a few yards off the path and sat down with his back against a boulder. He switched off his light and sat motionless in the dark, listening to the roving wind.



Last night he thought he'd heard the thing, coming through the brush toward the hanging bait. Then, less than twenty feet from him, it had suddenly stopped. Logan's senses had sharpened, and he'd caught the distinct smell of a predatory cat. But when nothing had moved again for more than thirty minutes, he'd turned on his light and seen that whatever it was had silently gone.



Maybe it had been Greediguts, maybe not, Logan told himself. If there really was such a thing. But if a monster panther did hunt the forests of Usherland, sooner or later it would be drawn here by the smell of blood and meat. Logan had come to this spot every night to wait for several hours, and had seen bobcat and fox tracks in the dirt, but never pawprints of anything as big as the panther was supposed to be.



Greediguts was the main reason Logan had decided to take this job. He'd been wanting to try his skill at finding the panther for a long time, and being invited to live at Usherland put him right in what was supposed to be the monster's territory. His only weapon was a knife with a serrated blade, which he kept in a leather sheath on his right ankle. If there was such a creature as Greediguts, and the panther did come this way, Logan knew he'd have to be fast, faster than ever before. But it was more of a challenge this way, and he had faith in his own very special talents.



It was time now. He began breathing slowly and rhythmically, pressing his back against the boulder. Through his flannel shirt he could feel the ridges and hollows of the rock, and he mentally commanded himself to become part of it, to merge flesh with stone. Slowly his pulse rate began to drop. He shivered once as his body temperature lowered, then he overcame that lack of concentration and willed himself to stay perfectly still. His breathing slowed until it was almost imperceptible. In his motionless face, Logan's pupils had dilated to the size of dimes. His heartbeat had all but stopped.



If anything roamed near, Logan might appear to be an irregular outcrop of rock. He could remain in his frozen posture for hours, if necessary, but could also leap to his feet within seconds if he desired.



A few days before, he'd stood in the garden watching Kattrina Usher walk from the Gatehouse to the garage. He liked the promise of her tight, sleek body, her rear moving suggestively in her pink jumpsuit. She was the best-looking woman he'd ever seen, worlds away from the Taylorville girls he'd sometimes gone out with. As she passed him, he'd said hello, but she'd looked at him distastefully, and for an instant Logan had felt like something that slithered from under a rock. Then she was gone, on along the garden path. Logan knew that look: she thought she was too good even to speak to him. He'd watched her go to the garage, and desire had burned like coals under his ribs. She was like Granddad Robert's dog Mutt, Logan thought in the silence of his trance; it had bothered him how Mutt used to avoid him, once even snapping at his offered hand. So it was a challenge to practice his talents on Mutt, to make the animal come to him wagging its tail and fawning before he'd bashed it in the head with a ball-peen hammer.



Logan had figured out which window was Kattrina's, and sometimes he stood beneath it, peering up. Edwin had caught him doing that yesterday afternoon, and had told him he was supposed to be working in the laundry. Edwin watched him all the time, and Logan knew Cass didn't like him worth shit. Edwin had said he was abusing their "relationship of trust"  - whatever the fuck that meant - and not showing up for the various jobs he was supposed to do on the estate. Logan didn't care; he wasn't planning on staying around Usherland very much longer. This chief-of-staff shit was stifling his freedom; all he wanted was enough money to buy a new car and head off to California.



But maybe, Logan mused, before he left he might have to try his talents out on a person. Like Kattrina. He remembered that look, and it twisted his insides. He'd make her come to him, fawning and begging and wagging her tail. Or maybe he'd try them out on that Rix bastard. Make that arrogant son of a bitch put a pistol barrel between his teeth and pull the trigger, or cut his wrists open in the shower. That'd be worth looking forward to, as long as he didn't have to clean up the mess.



Animals like domestic dogs and cats were the easiest. Wild animals took more control. Once, at the Asheville zoo, he'd stood in front of a cage where a wolf bitch was suckling her young. The wolf had stared coldly at him, and he at her. He'd suddenly known what he wanted her to do, and he'd carefully formed the picture in his mind of the bitch doing it. Beside him, a little kid had called excitedly for his mother, and that had jarred Logan's concentration so he'd had to start all over again. He'd repeated the picture again in his head, fixed it in his mind, and made it move. The she-wolf was strong, and for a while she'd resisted him.



But after a few minutes she'd picked up the pups and, one by one, crushed them in her jaws.



The little kid beside Logan had burst into tears. As Logan left, the wolf was nudging her pups, trying to make them feed again.



He'd tried it only once with a person: Mr. Holly, his geometry teacher in high school. Mr. Holly was a gangly old geezer who wore bow ties and suspenders, and was going to flunk him. One morning in class, Logan had stared at Mr. Holly when the old man was rattling on about areas of triangles, and had caught his gaze. Logan had formed the mental image of Mr. Holly in his rustbucket Ford, with his foot pressed down hard on the accelerator. Mr. Holly's mouth had stopped spewing formulas. Logan had added details to the picture: the car was racing along the county road between the high school and Taylorville, and ahead was the Pearl Creek Bridge. Inside the Ford, Mr. Holly was sitting with a zipper across his mouth, the same kind of smug look on his face as when he told Logan he was in danger of summer school. Twist the wheel, Logan had commanded mentally, and pictured the old man spinning the steering wheel violently to the right, sending the Ford crashing into the bridge's concrete railing so hard that Mr. Holly was ejected halfway through the windshield before the steering column pierced his guts. When Logan had let the vision fade out like a movie, Mr. Holly said he felt sick and needed to be excused. The whole class had heard him puking in the hall.



But he was back the next day. For more than a week, Logan played the same movie in his head. At the very least, it interrupted the old man's boring lectures. Soon, Logan tired of the game and began thinking up ways to cheat on the final exam.



A month later, the Foxton Democrat said that Mr. Paul Holly of Taylorville, aged fifty-eight and a geometry teacher for more than seventeen years, had died when his Ford hit the Pearl Creek Bridge. The scuttlebutt around the school, which Logan had heard with a stunned sense of satisfaction, was that crazy old Holly had left a suicide note to his wife that had Twist the wheel written on it a hundred times.



But the teacher who'd taken Holly's place in May had flunked Logan anyway.



Logan had always kept his talents to himself. He didn't understand where they'd come from, or why he had them, but he knew his control was getting better. He didn't want his mom and dad knowing - what would they say if they found out what he'd done to Holly? Logan regretted having cut Mutt open; that had been damned stupid, but Granddad hadn't called Edwin about it, so he figured he'd gotten away with his little experiment.



The almost imperceptible cracking of a twig brought Logan out of his trance. Within a minute his pulse had returned to normal, as had his body temperature. His senses quested in the darkness. He could smell a cat, prowling close by.



Brush stirred near the path. Careful, Logan warned himself. If the bastard jumps at me, I'd better be ready. He was hoping to stun it with the light before it had a chance to attack him. He waited a moment longer, listening, then aimed the light toward the path.



He switched it on.



The beam exploded onto a skinny bobcat with tattered ears, its tongue licking hungrily at the crusted blood beneath the newly hung carcasses.



Its eyes flared in the light, and Logan saw its hind legs tense for a leap into the underbrush. He quickly decided that he wanted to add it to the collection, and summoned the image of the bobcat frozen on the path, sending that image like a cold spear that left his mind and linked him with the animal. The bobcat tried to leap, but its will was sapped. It scrambled in a circle, snapping at its tail.



Logan concentrated on the image, strengthening it, slowing the animal until it stood panting and confused on the path, its legs stiff and its mouth open in a snarl. Its eyes had begun to frost over.



Logan could feel it trying to tear itself loose, and he kept the image firmly in his mind as he approached. Except for the movement of its sides as it breathed, the bobcat might have been a stuffed hunting trophy. Logan bent down a few feet from the animal, looking at the pink tongue and the gleaming, exposed teeth. He unsnapped the knife from its sheath at his ankle, then extended his arm and jabbed the bobcat's side.



The animal's mouth opened wider, but its legs didn't move.



It always amused him to see them like this - helpless, waiting for the killing stroke. He had an animal snare in his mind, and he could trap or release them as he chose. Of all the animals he'd caught, killed, and hung from the wires, the squirrels had been the toughest because they moved so fast. It was harder to stop them when they were on the run.



Logan traced the bobcat's ribs with the point of his knife. The animal shivered suddenly, then was motionless again. He put the blade to the soft flesh of the bobcat's throat and jabbed inward, then slashed with a skill born of much practice.



Blood jetted over his arm before he could get out of the way. The bobcat shuddered, a high hissing noise coming from its mouth. It was hard to hold them when they felt that pain, and Logan moved backward in case the link snapped. In another few seconds it did, and the bobcat shrieked, clawing wildly at empty air, its body out of control and writhing in agony. With cold, clinical interest, Logan watched it die. Finally the bobcat lay on its side in its own blood, and its breathing stopped.



Logan wiped his blade on the animal's fur, then snapped it back into its sheath.



And when he stood up, the flesh at the back of his neck crawled. He sensed at once that he was being watched by something very close.



He spun around, probing with the light. He saw nothing but trees, rusted cages, hanging vines, and rough-edged boulders. Still, his flesh tingled; something was there, very near, but what it was he couldn't tell. Greediguts? he thought, and felt a shiver of panic. No, no - it wasn't an animal. There was no animal scent in the air. He swept his light back and forth across the path. Whatever watched him was as good as he at merging with its surroundings.



His legs were stiffening, turning freezing cold. Move! he told himself. Get back to the house!



He tried to move his feet, and whimpered softly when he found that his knees were tightly locked. The cold was rapidly spreading through his body, weighting his limbs.



His fingers involuntarily opened; the flashlight fell to the ground.



Run! he screamed mentally. His legs wouldn't move. His brain was going numb with the cold, and he realized that he was being invaded, just as he'd invaded the bobcat a few minutes before. His heart was pounding, but his thought impulses continued to slow, like the frozen gears of a machine.



Spraying out across the ground, the light touched the shoes of a figure standing before him on the path, barely ten feet away.



Logan tried to cry out, but the muscles of his face were frozen and he couldn't open his mouth. His teeth ground together as he fought against a power that held him, but he knew that against this overwhelming force he hadn't a chance to break free.



The veins in his neck stood out; his eyes glistened with terror.



Pump . . . kin .. . Man, Logan thought before his mind shut down like an icehouse.



The figure stood motionless before him for a moment longer, then silently approached and stretched out a hand to touch Logan's face.