Todd was half-tempted to call down to her, to offer some word of encouragement, but he refrained from doing so. For one thing, he didn’t want to admit that he’d stood as a spectator to this whole drama; second, he was afraid of distracting Maxine while she was down there. Certainly her killing of the creature had silenced its brethren in the thicket, but their silence didn’t mean they’d given up their stalking. They were simply sitting in the shadows waiting for Maxine to make a mistake, when no doubt they would fall upon her in a vengeful mob.
Thus, keeping his silence, Todd watched Maxine make her way between the cages, glancing back at the house constantly, as though she was trying to find a path that would lead her back to safety but was at present only able to find one that ran parallel to the house. She was now thirty or forty yards from the cages, which was a good thing, because that meant she couldn’t see what was happening on the walkway beneath them.
A minute or two after her exit, a few of Lana’s family members appeared from the thicket where-as Todd had known-they’d been waiting. Now about six of them came out of hiding. They had no interest in the corpse of their sibling. It was Sawyer they wanted. Surrounding his body they began to play with the corpse like children with some gruesome toy. They tore off his clothes, and bit off his penis and balls. They followed that by biting off fingers, knuckle by knuckle, and spitting the pieces out. They seemed to take infantile pleasure in the mess they were making. Todd was horribly disgusted by the spectacle, but he kept watching, until they were finished with the fingers and began to disembowel the man. Only then did he retreat from the balcony railing and go back inside.
It would not necessarily be easy for Maxine to find her way back up to the house, he realized. Many of the pathways were overgrown, and in her present, no doubt panicked, state of mind, she could easily lose her way and keep on losing it. He would have to go outside and find her.
Katya was still sleeping. The shots hadn’t even stirred her. Indeed, she seemed to have scarcely moved, so profound was her slumber. Her hand was still up at her mouth, limply curled round on itself.
He kissed her, saw that this did not wake her either, and left her to her slumbers.
FIVE
Eppstadt was in the Devil’s Country. A fine drizzle, almost a mist, was drooping from the bloated clouds; it came in soft waves against his face, cooling his flushed skin. If he doubted the reality of this place, its chill seemed designed to undo his doubt.
He hated the idea that what he was witnessing was real; doing so violated all his logical faculties. But what was the alternative? That he’d slipped and fallen, and was now lying at the bottom of the stairs in a semi-comatose state, imagining all this? It was a pretty solution, but as he had no way of knowing whether it was true or not: his only option was to find Joe, and get the hell out of here before the place began to get even crazier than it already was. The less he knew about this country-the less its grotesqueries lodged in his psyche-the happier the rest of his life would surely be.
With that thought he began a three hundred and sixty degree scanning of the landscape, calling Joe’s name as he did so. His din (even his simple presence) was enough to stir life in the bushes and trees. He felt himself watched by several species of unlikely animal, their eyes huge and luminous, their postures, and in some cases the details of the physiognomies, vaguely human, as though this twilight world had witnessed all kinds of criminal couplings.
Finally, he heard a response from Joe.
“Who’s there?”
“Eppstadt.”
“Come over here. Quickly. You gotta help me.”
He followed the sound of the man’s shouting. There was a small copse ahead, and Joe had clambered a few feet into a tree by means of a crude wooden ladder which had been propped against one of the trunks.