“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 25
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 up by the night’s blackness, she stared after them, standing in the yellow halo of the light cast by the porch lamp, motionless as her thoughts drifted back through the years to Nest and Caitlin and her own childhood. She had lived a long life, and she was always surprised on looking back at how quickly the time had passed and how close together the years had grown.
The screen door started to swing shut behind her, and she reached back automatically to catch it and ease it carefully into place. In the deep night silence, she could hear the creak of its hinges and springs like ghost laughter.
After a moment, she began to look around, searching the shadows where the lawn lengthened in a darkening carpet to the shagbark hickories fronting the walk leading in from Woodlawn Road and to the mix of blue spruce and walnut that bracketed the corners of their two-acre lot. She knew already what she would find, but the porch light was blinding her. She reached inside the doorway and shut it off, leaving her in darkness. Better, she thought. She could see them clearly now, the gleaming yellow eyes, dozens strong, too many to be coincidental, too many to persuade her she had guessed wrong about what was going to happen.
She smiled tightly. If you understood them well enough, the feeders could tell you things even without speaking.
Her eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness now, able to trace the angular shapes of the trees, the smooth spread of the lawn, the flat, broad stretch of the roadway, and the low, sprawling roofs of the houses farther down the way. She gave the landscape a moment’s consideration, then turned her attention to the porch on which she stood-to its eaves and railings, its fitted ceiling boards, and its worn, tongue-and-groove wooden flooring. Finally her eyes settled on the old peg oak rocker that had been with her from the time of her marriage to Robert. She could trace the events of her life by such things. This house had borne mute witness to the whole of her married life-to the joy and wonder she had been privileged to experience, to the tragedy and loss she had been forced to suffer. These walls had given her peace when it was needed. They had lent her strength. They were part of her, rooted deep within her heart and soul. She smiled. She could do worse than end her life here.
She gave the feeders another quick study, then slipped through the screen door and walked to the back of the house. She would have to hurry. If the demon was coming for her, as she was certain now he was, he would not waste any time. With Robert out of the way, he would hasten to put an end to matters quickly. He would be confident that he could do so. She was old and worn, and no longer a match for him. She laughed to herself. He was predictable in ways he did not begin to recognize, and in the end they would prove his undoing.