Free The Dead Man: Hell in Heaven by Lee Goldberg, William Rabkin Page B

begin to think again.
    It was possible that they’d come to their senses, realize how insane it was to wage war against their neighbors. That they’d reach out and embrace as they faced the new day together. Yes, that was possible. In the same way it was possible that when the sun rose, Matt could gather the girl in his arms and fly back to the highway.
    Most likely what would happen was that both sides, when given a chance to think through the evening’s events, would realize that they had failed to murder this poor young girl. They’d come looking for her.
    And Matt had no idea what he’d do then.
    There was a sound from outside the house. Matt started awake, and only then realized he’d drifted off to sleep. He listened, waiting for the sound to come again. It had been a sharp crack, a twig snapping or a pinecone kicked aside.
    Not the mob. Maybe one person.
    One person he could handle.
    Matt went to the door, grabbing the axe from the coffee table where Joan had showed him photo albums of her son just one night earlier. Now the albums were gone, and Matt suspected they’d never existed, except as some kind of hallucination she’d planted in his head.
    What had she wanted from him? Someone to rule by her side, she’d said. Someone to distract her from her loneliness. But why him? Because he’d been the first man she’d met who wasn’t with the Vetches or the Gilhoolies? The first guy who happened to stop by?
    But he couldn’t have just happened by. He couldn’t have. This town, with its feuding families, its strange way of speaking and lack of anything modern, it wasn’t just some town lying off the highway in the Cascades. If there had ever been a town in Washington State with a feud like this, he would have heard of it. Everyone would have heard of it. It was simply not possible to be this isolated anywhere in the United States of America.
    Not in the USA of the 21st century, that was.
    How long had the Vetches and the Gilhoolies been locked in stasis under Joan’s rule? Years? Decades? Centuries? It didn’t seem possible. Hell, it wasn’t possible.
    He tried to shut the idea out of his brain. To pretend that it had never crossed his mind that this was anything but a perfectly normal town that just happened to be inhabited by perfectly strange people. That the people of Heaven, Washington, were what he had originally feared, some kind of bizarre religious cult.
    But he couldn’t.
    There was too much that didn’t fit. And most of what didn’t fit was him. They’d known he was coming—known him by name . They’d prayed for him to come, that’s what the little girl Mouse had said.
    Then he remembered—only after she had started to say something else. Summ . Summoned?
    They’d summoned him, like some hero or demon out of an ancient story? If that was true, what did it make them? What did it make him ?
    The night outside was cold and bright; the stars shone down, white like a cleansing fire. He closed the door gently behind him and listened. For a moment there was nothing. And then he heard a rustling in the brush.
    And then a cry, high and piercing, so loud he could feel blood trickling from his ears the way it had dripped down the young girl’s leg.
    Matt whirled around as a black form exploded from a stand of trees. It was too big to see all at once, moved too fast to make out its form. He saw the black of feathers, the white of claw, jaundiced yellow beak.
    Some kind of bird. Some kind of hideous black crow. But bigger than him, wingspan the length of the house, an eye as big as his head. And a jagged beak plunging down directly at his heart.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
     
    Matt dived to the ground and rolled, came up slashing at the giant beak with his axe. But in the time it took to swing the weapon through its arc, the bird disappeared. Didn’t jump, didn’t fly. It was there and then it was gone.
    Matt stumbled forward, carried off balance by the weight of the blade, then heard the terrible