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A THIN BEAM of lighta pile of e and squeaking, and Lenny Cochran kicked at one of the crates Instantly a small dark shape, then another, burst fros He followed theht until they disappeared behind a skiff that had been overturned for keel patching Big da around the center of the crates Probably a nest of the buggers in there, he told hiood fire would sear their asses and clean &039;em out
He turned away froht from side to side The barnacle-scarred hull of a trawler tied up at the wharfs caught the reflections of the light in the water; he shone the flashlight the length of the boat, then turned away and walked up through the hard-packed sand, stopping every so often to exaines laid out on the ground The tin-roofed supply shed was directly ahead; its doors had been hastily repaired and boarded over He paused only atoward the far side of the yard, where the sea lapped quietly against the sliding bulkhead of the abandoned naval shelter
He&039;d tried to get sostree, but none of them would have any part of it Mason and Percy had whined when he&039;d asked them; JR had flatly refused to do it, and so had the others He couldn&039;t force any of the uilty about having that boat put into Mr Langstree&039;s yard without proper permission anyway, and this was a way to ease his own conscience and get back into Mr Langstree&039;s good graces
He knew exactly what bothered the others; it was the stories they heard, and Boniface&039;s warning about staying away from the yard He&039;d heard the whispers around the bars: So nobody wanted to talk about, and it had to do with the daht Boat, that&039;s what they called it It gave him the willies to think about what the two trawler captains had said Ju down at you to go for your eyeballs and tear out your heart
He shivered Stop that kind of thinkin&039;, ets a body in trouble! He felt again for the old skeleton-gripped revolver he&039;d brought as protection He&039;d only been able to find three shells at hoh anyway, to scare off anybody who ht come to steal ht Noup, mebbe one, two days away at most
And in another few moments he was at the door of the dark naval shelter
Heit; whoever had nailed it up had done a hell of a job Nobody was going to be breaking in there tonight He looked along the wall, probed with the point of the light doard the rotten pilings at the seaside and then, satisfied no one was lurking there, started to move quickly toward the other side of the yard
And then stopped
Flesh writhed along his spine and at the back of his neck His heart was ha to shake off the fear What the hell was? He turned, thrusting the flashlight forward as if it were a weapon
He waited, not daring to breathe, listening for the noise that had sounded like so behind that door
Rats Rats caught in there, seeking a way out
And as he watched he saw the door slowly bulge outward, pushed by a tremendous force Wood creaked and whined, then settled back on its frame He couldn&039;toutward, outward, the noise of nails giving way around ti in his hand; he couldn&039;t hold it still, and when he drew the gun he couldn&039;t keep that steady either
The door cried out eerily with the force of whatever was on the other side; with a noise like a pistol shot a split appeared in its center A jagged gap gren the weathered wood
Fro down and snapping away one of the reinforcing tith to flee He raised the gun and squeezed the trigger, hearing the sound of his own labored breathing loudly in his ears
But the hammer fell dully upon one of the e of wood and nails; a half-dozen claws probed through, tearing a way out Cochran tried to lift the gun again, but it seemed too heavy and he knew he couldn&039;t aie, tell thes had descended upon Coquina
And it was then that one of the things that had coh the darkness behind hih the back of his neck and crunching on the spinal cord Another grasped his left ar it from its socket A third clawed at the man&039;s chest in frenzy, broke open the ribs, and tore the heart out like a dripping treasure
The commander stood apart from the others Wilhelm Korrin let them feast, then motioned with a shriveled arlow in the sky, and Steven Kip was driving toward it
He had left ho Myra with a loaded rifle and telling her to keep the doors and shutters locked He&039;d gone down to his office to get the second rifle and a can of gasoline before patrolling the village Now, driving along the harbor, he saw the light over the treetops in the distance, and he kneas co from near Boniface&039;s church More voodoo? he asked hih the ee fire blazed in a circle that had been dug out and ringed with red and black painted stones in front of the church Kip could see shards of ti, and what looked like shattered sections of the church pews piled in it At the fire&039;s base a heap of ashes glowed a bright red-orange, and the heat of it seared his face as he left his vehicle He walked around the circle and haain with the strength of anger, the heat touching hiht-red nails The church s, like watchful eyes, reflected the flah the shutter slats
"BONIFACE!" Kip called out
And then, very slowly, the door opened
Boniface stood before hiht beads of sweat, each one reflecting fire, glistening on his face In his eyes the blaze seemed white-hot "Get away froain, but Kip slaainst it and forced his way in
The church was filled with the red glow, alive with the frenzied slithering of shadows Many of the seats had indeed been torn out as fuel for the flames, and there was an axe propped in a corner On the altar were the pots and strange bottles Kip had seen at the jungle cere on the walls, and the floor around the altar was sprinkled with sawdust and ashes Kip shook his head and stared at the old lass eye, its pupil a glea red circle
Boniface reached forward and bolted the door, then turned to the constable A drop of sweat ran down across his cheek and spattered onto the floor
"What are you doing, old man?" Kip asked "What&039;s this fire for?"
"Get away!" Boniface repeated "As quickly as you can!"
Kip ignored hi the s in black pots All voodoo things, he remembered, used to communicate with the spirit world One of the pots had been overturned, an oily-looking liquid spilled fro its remains in red smears on the paint
"Get back to your home!" Boniface said "Get back to your woman and child!"
"What&039;s all this for?" he asked,to feel a coldness working its way into him, slowly and insidiously
Boniface opened his mouth, paused, his eyes fearful and half-crazed "To keep them away" he said, very quietly
"Talk sense!" Kip said, fighting to hold back his anger
"They fear the fire I&039;ve been trying to break it it&039;s too difficult now, and I&039;m old, and I&039;m weak and I&039;m very tired"
"Break it? Break what, da but the words never came He seemed to shrivel up, even as Kip watched hi hihtened eyes re on a shattered pew; he sat down, put his face in his hands, and stayed that way for almost a minute When he looked up his face was drawn and anxious, as if he&039;d heard soht and came to rest on Kip&039;s face "Help me," he said in a whisper "Can&039;t you help me?"
"Help you do what?"
"It&039;s too late" Boniface said, as if he were speaking to hiht they would"
"Listen to an "Two more people are dead probably others as well I want to knohat those things are, and I think you can tell me"
"The boat," Boniface whispered "That beast froht Boat No one can help now They&039;re free; I can feel it They&039;re free, all of them, and no man can turn them back until they&039;ve done what theydeep "Tella long breath, Boniface put a hand to his face The gesture cast a huge shadow on the opposite wall He nodded, as if giving hie Do you know it?"
"Only from hearsay," Kip said
"The most powerful and secret society in all the islands They use the dark things as their weapons; for power or a price they cause famine and pestilence, they commit murders cold-bloodedly and efficiently I know Because I was a e for five years, and in that time I createdthe waxen ies of my enemies or those I was paid to assassinate, to slowly force nails one by one through the opening of the ht around the throat I learned the art of the wanga - poisons - and how to leave a trace of it on a lass, so that death came painfully and stretched into weeks I conjured the evil loa, and conspired with them for the souls of e; I have worked the sorcery that transfigures ti and the dead, and I have unleashed evil things onto this world